Moderna begins human trial of experimental Ebola vaccine in Canada as deaths mount in DRC

Moderna Inc. has begun testing an experimental Ebola vaccine in people, marking the second candidate to enter clinical trials against the strain driving the deadliest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo’s history.

The vaccine, which uses the company’s mRNA platform, is being tested as a single shot in about 80 healthy adults in Canada. Initial safety and immune-response data are expected in the coming months, Moderna said Tuesday.

The program is backed by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which has committed up to $50 million to fund the phase-1 trial and manufacture additional vaccine doses in parallel so larger studies can begin quickly if the early data are encouraging.

CEPI is accelerating efforts to develop vaccines against the rare Bundibugyo strain as the outbreak continues to worsen. It spread to a fifth Congolese province last month, while the confirmed death toll has doubled in just over two weeks to 1,707. As of Sunday, authorities had reported 3,802 confirmed cases, making it the largest since the 2013-16 West Africa outbreak.

“Getting Moderna’s vaccine candidate into a phase-1 trial this rapidly is a major step forward in the fight against this deadly outbreak,” CEPI’s Chief Executive Officer Richard Hatchett said in a statement.

If licensed, Moderna said it would make at least 500,000 doses available to low- and middle-income countries under access pricing.

There are no approved vaccines or therapies for Bundibugyo Ebola. Merck & Co.’s Ervebo vaccine, which is licensed against the Zaire strain responsible for Congo’s previous major outbreak and the West Africa epidemic, isn’t approved for Bundibugyo.

Still, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and its partners plan to present a proposal to a World Health Organization advisory panel this week to consider using the vaccine to help protect frontline health workers, at least 46 of whom have died in the outbreak.

Moderna’s vaccine joins an adenovirus-vectored candidate developed by the University of Oxford that entered phase-1 testing last month, while Merck and its partners are preparing a third Bundibugyo vaccine based on the technology behind Ervebo for human studies later this year.