Daily Mail – by Lizzie ParryThe first healthy human volunteer has been injected with an experimental Ebola vaccine today as part of a fast-tracked British trial.
Ruth Atkins, a 48-year-old NHS communications manager from Marcham, Oxfordshire, was injected at Oxford’s Vaccine Group Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine today.
The trial, which will ultimately involve 60 volunteers including two on Friday, is part of a series of safety tests of potential drugs aimed at preventing infection with the virus.
Organisers stressed there is no likelihood any of the subjects will catch Ebola, since the vaccine contains no infectious Ebola virus.
Ms Atkins, who has also worked as a nurse in the NHS, said: ‘I feel absolutely fine, it felt no different to being vaccinated before going on holiday.: It’s that one step and I’m part of that first step.
She has children aged 12 and 15 and was only accepted for the trial on Monday after completing screening tests last week.
Ms Atkins, who will keep a diary of her side effects over the next eight weeks and undergo regular blood tests, said she first heard about the trial while listening to the radio.
‘I volunteered because the situation in West Africa is so tragic and I thought being part of this vaccination process was something small I could do to hopefully make a huge impact,’ she said.
‘I did not realise until today how many people behind the scenes have worked extra and unsociable hours to get this to trial so quickly.
‘The team has been so helpful and supportive, coming in for early morning appointments to allow me to take part before I go to work.’
She admitted her friends and family had raised concerns.
‘My 15-year-old son thought it was Ebola I’m having and he asked am I going to die and where is my will and how much do I get?’ she said.
‘My 12-year-old daughter was concerned but also said well done mum for what you’re doing.’
Ebola has killed more than 2,400 people in West Africa this year, in the world’s largest Ebola outbreak since the disease was discovered in Zaire in 1976.
The U.S. yesterday vowed to deploy 3,000 armed troops to Liberia, the country hardest hit by the outbreak, to help tackle the epidemic.
The vaccine is designed to specifically target the Zaire species of the virus – the one responsible for the current epidemic.
The strain has a mortality rate of up to 90 per cent, according to the World Health Organisation.
The first British volunteer is today expected to be injected with an experimental Ebola vaccine as part of a fast-tracked trial taking place at Oxford University
Last week an Oxford University study predicted the Ebola epidemic, which has so far killed more than 2,400 people in West Africa, could spread to 15 countries putting 22 million people at risk
The British trial, led by Professor Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, is testing the vaccine on healthy volunteers with the goal of determining whether it is safe, and whether it provokes a protective immune response.
Prof Hill stressed the participants were safe, adding: ‘We are not doing the trial itself any faster.
‘It’s the arrangements, the approval for the trial from manufacturers, regulatory bodies and the ethical council that has happened in record time when under any other circumstances it would have taken years.
‘They have put this at the top of their pile. There has been a lot of help from the World Health Organisation and the Department of Health. Some very senior people have said we really have to do this now otherwise people will continue to die.’
He added that he was ‘enormously grateful’ to the 60 volunteers.
The vaccine is being co-developed by the United States National Institutes of Health and the British drugs company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
The drug is based on a benign virus which causes a cold in chimpanzees – an adenovirus.
The adenovirus is used as a carrier to deliver benign genetic material derived from the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus.
The genetic material cannot cause the volunteer to become infected with Ebola.
Rather it allows the vaccine recipient’s cells to express a protein, which in turn prompts an immune response.
Funding for the trials is coming from a £2.8 million grant from the Wellcome Trust, as well as backing from the Medical Research Council, and the UK Department for International Development.
Professor Hill revealed last month he was looking to recruit 60 healthy people from in and around Oxford, aged 18 to 50, to take part.
He said: ‘The tragic events unfolding in Africa demand an urgent response.
‘In recent years, similar investigational vaccines have safely immunised infants and adults against a range of diseases including malaria, HIV and hepatitis C.
‘We, and all our partners on this project, are optimistic that this candidate vaccine may prove useful against Ebola.’
The volunteers are not at risk of catching Ebola by taking part in the trial, as the only component is a gene for a protein that sits on the virus’s surface – a protein which does not cause the illness.
The aim is to complete tests by the end of the this year, after which vaccines could be deployed on an emergency basis.
GSK said it plans to begin making up to around 10,000 additional doses of the vaccine as the initial clinical trials get underway.
If successful, it would mean the vaccine could be made available immediately for an emergency immunisation programme.
Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said: ‘This epidemic has shown how difficult it can be to control Ebola.
‘How useful drugs and vaccines might be in complementing existing public health interventions can only be assessed in epidemics.
‘The initial safety work we’re announcing today with our international partners will hopefully make that possible during this crisis and for inevitable future epidemics.’
UK International Development Secretary Justine Greening added: ‘We are co-funding these important clinical trials to find a safe vaccine for Ebola as well as providing critical care on the ground.
‘Britain is a world leader in medical research and mobilising our unique strengths to find a vaccine could be pivotal to containing Ebola and preventing future outbreaks.’
Dr Ben Neuman, virologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline: ‘There is clearly a need for this vaccine, but what is not clear is whether it will work well enough to protect someone from Ebola.
‘This vaccine uses some of the best available technology to give the immune system a good long look at its target – a small but vitally important part of the virus.
‘However we won’t really be able to tell whether the vaccine works until it is tested on the ground in West Africa.
‘Two trials with HIV vaccines that used very similar vaccine technology have recently failed, despite promising initial results.
‘Volunteers who are getting the vaccine will almost certainly make a cocktail of sticky antibodies in response.
‘Some antibodies like the ones in ZMapp can stop the virus, but there is evidence to suggest that other antibodies can actually make the disease worse.’
President Obama yesterday warned that as America scurries to help west African nations grapple with the deadly Ebola epidemic, ‘we can’t dwadle on this one’.
The U.S. Defense Department is sending 3,000 armed troops to intervene in Liberia, the nation hit hardest during the current outbreak.
‘Today, thousands of people in west Africa are infected,’ the president said.
‘That number could rapidly grow to tens of thousands.
‘And if the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound economic and security implications for us all.’
The WHO said on Friday the number of Ebola cases in West Africa is growing faster than authorities can manage them and urged health workers from around the world to go to the region to help.
WHO chiefs warned a ‘treatment’ for Ebola, made from the blood of survivors is being traded on the black market in West Africa.
Health experts have warned the serums could contain other harmful infections as the WHO vowed to work with governments to stamp out the illicit trade.
The ‘convalescent serum’ is made from survivors’ blood, which contains antibodies that could help fight the virus, Bloomberg News reported.
Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO said: ‘There is a danger that such serums could contain other infections and wouldn’t be administered properly.’
Currently, there are no approved drugs to treat Ebola, though several are in the developmental stages.
Patients are given intravenous fluids, blood transfusions and antibiotics to bolster their immune systems and help fight off other infections.
However, the blood of survivors contains natural antibodies that can protect against Ebola.
Antibodies are produced by the body’s white blood cells and bind to foreign invaders like viruses and bacteria to neutralise them as a threat.
About half of the people infected during the current outbreak have survived, providing a potential pool of donors.
The WHO is developing a system where blood from survivors of the disease can be drawn out safely and re-injected into patients.
It comes as Ebola survivor Dr Kent Brantly donated blood to a fellow American aid worker infected with the diesase.
Dr Rick Sacra received blood transfusions from Dr Brantly shortly after he arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center earlier this month.
Last week an Oxford University study warned the current epidemic could affect 15 countries, putting 22 million people at risk.
‘EBOLA COULD BECOME AIRBORNE’ SCIENTIST WARNS
Writing for the The New York Times, Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy a the University of Minnesota, said those experts are loathed to discuss their concerns in public, for fear of whipping up hysteria.
Discussing the possible future course of the current outbreak, he said: ‘The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air.’
But the chair of the UK’s Health Protection Agency, Professor David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene of Tropical Medicine, said it is impossible to predict how any virus will mutate.
He said scientists across the world do not know enough about genetics to be able to say how the ebola virus will change over time.
Pointing to the example of the H1N1 influenza virus that saw bird flu sweep the globe in 2009, Dr Osterholm said: ‘If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola.’
But Professor Heymann, told MailOnline: ‘No one can predict what will happen with the mutation of the virus.
‘I would like to see the evidence that this could become a respiratory virus.
‘The virus’s epidemiology is consistent with transmission via bodily secretions and excretions, which is exactly the same as other past epidemics.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2759001/First-UK-Ebola-vaccine-trial-Healthy-volunteer-injected-experimental-drug-designed-fight-deadly-virus.html#ixzz3Dbi9FFNd
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This person won’t get the Ebola virus but the next person who gets the vaccine probably will and I will just say they were stupid enough for getting the shot.
likely this (single dose of the) vaccine is inert.
A person given a vaccine against virues will shed the virus into the environment thus spreading the disease to the unvaccinated. This is true when given the live or modified live vaccines. That is how they spread the flu epedemics each year.
She’s a fool … or paid off.
. . .
@Cathleen, probably both a fool and paid off. No amount of money would coerce me.