At symposium, vaccine seen as best hope for arresting Ebola

At a wide-ranging symposium on West Africa’s Ebola epidemic today, much of the attention focused on the hope of an effective vaccine, as a US official announced that a large clinical trial of two candidate vaccines may be launched in Liberia in December. Peter Jahrling, PhD, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), announced that plans call for a trial involving 30,000 participants, with 10,000 getting one of two candidate Ebola vaccines and 10,000 receiving a hepatitis vaccine as a control. Calling the project a phase 2/3 trial, he said, “One would hope that once the results are analyzed it would facilitate licensure of at least one of those.” He is chief scientist at the NIAID’s Integrated Research Facility. Also at the symposium, Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, of the University of Minnesota said his Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) will collaborate with Jeremy Farrar, MBBS, DPhil,...