Canada Approves Start of Clinical Trials for Moderna's Ebola Vaccine

Canada has authorized the US pharmaceutical company Moderna to begin clinical trials of a vaccine against the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, the Canadian Health Ministry announced on Tuesday.

Healthy participants in the clinical trial will receive a dose of the vaccine to assess the production of antibodies against the Bundibugyo strain.

Moderna will be required to conduct “additional phases of clinical trials” using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which it helped pioneer in the fight against COVID-19.

Canada, which has barred entry since July 20 to any foreign national who has recently been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has reached an agreement with the US company Moderna to manufacture mRNA-based vaccines on its territory.

No vaccine or treatment is currently available against the Bundibugyo variant, which is responsible for the current Ebola outbreak declared on May 15 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Singapore-based “Hilleman Laboratories” will develop the “rVSV Bundibugyo” vaccine, which the World Health Organization considers to have the highest chances of success.

In late July, the first volunteer received the first dose of another vaccine against the Bundibugyo strain, developed by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, which uses the same technology as the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

The Ebola virus, which is transmitted through close contact and contaminated bodily fluids and causes hemorrhagic fever, has killed more than 1,700 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo since May.