Updated 07:31 AM EDT, Thu, Mar 28, 2024

Ebola Virus Symptoms & Pictures: Preventing Spread & Infection Possible With Atlanta Vaccine?

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An Atlanta company is working on a vaccine against the Ebola virus.

Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that GeoVax Labs Inc. is developing two Ebola virus vaccines which it aims to let out by 2016.

The first vaccine, GOVX-E301, is reportedly "a single-dose vaccine for epidemic response against the ZEBOV strain of Ebola, the virus responsible for the current outbreak," said Atlanta Business Chronicle.

The second vaccine, c, will be a "two-dose regimen," the outlet said, and will be primarily used for "routine immunization" against the virus.

Dr. Robert McNally, president and CEO of GeoVax Labs Inc., said in a statement as quoted by Atlanta Business Chronicle:

"For the current epidemic, containment efforts have proven difficult to institute, accentuating the world's lack of preparation for a runaway Ebola epidemic and the need for a vaccine.

"With the knowledge gained from our experience in developing HIV vaccines, we believe our MVA-vectored Ebola vaccines have the unique attributes required for success and will offer superior results over other Ebola vaccines in development."

GeoVax Labs Inc. is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facilities in developing the said vaccines, Atlanta Business Chronicle added.

But GOVX-E301 and GOVX-E302 are not the only vaccines being worked on against Ebola virus. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) in an earlier post, two other experimental vaccines are deemed "promising."

GlaxoSmithKline's cAd3-ZEBOV "uses a chimpanzee-derived adenovirus vector with an Ebola virus gene inserted," WHO said of the first vaccine.

The second candidate vaccine is rVSV-ZEBOV, developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada in Winnipeg. "The vaccine uses an attenuated or weakened vesicular stomatitis virus, a pathogen found in livestock; one of its genes has been replaced by an Ebola virus gene," explained WHO.

International Business Times said that vaccine development typically takes years but that cAd3-ZEBOV and rVSV-ZEBOV are being "fast-tracked" approval.

"Every vaccine that is put out has to pass national safety standards if it's going to be used in the U.S.," WHO spokesman Dan Epstein told International Business Times.

"That's usually a two- or three-year process and we're trying to compress that in terms of these two vaccines into several months. In that case, if they're proven safe and proven to work, it's possible that they may be able to be used by mid-2015 at the earliest," he added.

Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, has passed away, said ABC News.

"Mr. Duncan succumbed to an insidious disease, Ebola. He fought courageously in this battle. Our professionals, the doctors and nurses in the unit, as well as the entire Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas community, are also grieving his passing," said the hospital in a statement.

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