Promising results have been published from the first human trial testing an experimental vaccine targeting the deadly Marburg virus. It has been flagged as a potential pandemic virus and is the first Marburg his vaccine to move into phase 2 clinical trials.
same origin Filoviridae Marburg, a family of Ebola virus-like viruses, are slightly less pathogenic but just as deadly as their better-known cousins. occurred, causing a fatal bleeding disorder. Subsequent genomic studies traced its origins to Uganda and Kenya.
Since then, there have been more than a dozen outbreaks in the past 50 years, most recently in Ghana last year. But Marburg’s horrific case fatality rate of up to 90% has led infectious disease experts to warn that the virus is very likely to become a major epidemic in the future.
“…previous Marburg virus outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2000) and Angola (2004–05) were controlled for months or years in certain settings, such as conflict areas with weak health infrastructure. Hundreds of people are dying,” Daniela Manno of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said in a recent editorial in The Lancet. “It’s probably only a matter of time before we have a major Marburg virus outbreak.”
Unlike Ebola, which has both monoclonal antibody therapy and an effective vaccine, there is no approved treatment or vaccine for Marburg disease. This has led Gavi, a global vaccine charity, to identify Marburg disease as a major concern for future pandemics.
This new Marburg vaccine, called (cAd3-Marburg), uses an adenovirus vector to deliver the Marburg glycoprotein. A primate study published last year showed that a single dose of the vaccine produced a protective immune response in animals that lasted up to a year.
A recent phase 1 clinical trial enrolled 40 healthy adults and administered an experimental vaccine. The cohort showed that the vaccine was well tolerated with no serious adverse effects.Significant immune responses were also detected in 95% of the subjects her and sustained in 70% of him throughout the 48-week follow-up period. bottom.
The US government recently invested millions of dollars to advance research into this Marburg vaccine. Subsequent human trials are currently planned in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and the United States.
Source: NIH
