CEPI Pledges $60 Million to Accelerate Development of Bundibugyo Ebolavirus Vaccines

The global health organization Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced Monday that it will “urgently accelerate development” of three vaccine candidates against Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV), pledging a little over $60 million in the effort to extinguish an outbreak currently raging out of control in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Under the plans, CEPI has committed up to $50 million to US-based Moderna for preclinical development and Phase 1 clinical testing of its mRNA-based BDBV vaccine candidate. The funding will simultaneously allow the company to ramp up manufacturing capabilities and ready large-scale Phase 2/3 trials in the event the vaccine makes it through early testing. The vaccine will use Moderna’s mRNA vaccine platform that allowed for rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

“[W]e believe our mRNA platform can play an important role in responding rapidly to emerging infectious disease threats,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement Monday. ” We will move with urgency and scientific rigor to support the response and help bring a potential vaccine closer to the communities that need it most.”

Raging outbreak

CEPI will also provide $3.2 million to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which is developing a vaccine that uses the same technology as Merck’s approved Ebola vaccine, Ervebo, which targets the more common Zaire ebolavirus strain.

Last, the CEPI is committing $8.6 million to the University of Oxford and Serum Institute of India, which is using its adenovirus-based vaccine platform, as it did for its COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

There are two licensed vaccines against Ebola disease currently, including Ervebo and Zabdeno/Mvabea by Johnson & Johnson. Both vaccines target the Zaire strain, which has caused most of the large outbreaks to date, followed by the Sudan strain. The current outbreak is only the third driven by the Bundibugyo strain. As such, there are currently no licensed therapeutics or vaccines against it.

The lack of medical interventions is one of the challenges facing health officials responding to the outbreak. Detection of the outbreak was delayed, allowing the virus to spread out of control. Disease is also spreading in an area of DRC with armed conflict, large population mobility, and significant need for humanitarian assistance.

As of Friday, the World Health Organization reported 1,041 cases (135 confirmed, 906 suspected) and 241 deaths (18 confirmed, 223 suspected) in the outbreak.