How long has the Ebola vaccine been researched? The vaccine is still being researched to this day

1. Scientists have actually been working on Ebola vaccine development for decades. However, it's also true that dealing with this particularly vicious virus isn't as easy as it would be in a normal situation.

2. Most traditional viral vaccines are made from inactivated or attenuated strains of the virus. However, in the case of Ebola, these traditional methods of vaccination have significant drawbacks. Inactivated vaccines are usually obtained by fixation with formalin or heat inactivation. In order to produce such vaccines, the prerequisite is to obtain a large amount of virus. Considering the extremely high risk of Ebola, vaccine production by this method is a head-in-your-pants exercise, with irreversible consequences in the event of a virus leak. Moreover, current laboratory studies have shown that the protective effect of inactivated Ebola vaccines is not sufficiently certain. As for the attenuated vaccine, there is also a risk of mutation to restore virulence (as has been found in Ebola vaccine tests in mice and guinea pigs), which also makes its safety not guaranteed.

3. To avoid these risks, scientists have begun the development of new vaccines. Among them, viral vector vaccines are a promising development program. This type of vaccine selects some other types of viruses as carriers and modifies and recombines them to make vaccines, including poxvirus vaccine, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus replicating particles (VRP) vaccine, adenovirus vector vaccine (AD), recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) vaccine, parainfluenza vector vaccine (PIV), etc.

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4. According to virologist Thomas G. Geisbert of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas, the vaccine has been shown to be effective in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Thomas Geisbert, there are a number of viral vector vaccines in development, some of which have shown good results in primates.

5. Geisbert has been working on Ebola since 1988, and his current main focus is to develop an Ebola vaccine with recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) as the backbone. All three vaccines he has developed have achieved close to 100% protection in rhesus monkeys.

6. VSV has a glycoprotein on its surface that serves to recognize the host cell. This protein is equivalent to a key, after opening the lock of the body cells, you can enter. Researchers of this virus "facelift", its original glycoprotein with the Ebola virus surface glycoprotein replacement. In this way, the modified VSV vaccine allows the body to produce antibodies against the Ebola virus, but at the same time is not pathogenic.

7. However, these studies are still in the preclinical stage. These vaccines are from the skeleton of the virus, "origin" is not good, although modified, but there is still a risk of recurrence, so regulators are still cautious about the application of such vaccines, and this also contradicts the scientists eager to promote the desire of the research. Geisbert complained that if the research goes well, his vaccine should have entered phase I clinical trials, but the regulatory review process for clinical trials is always extraordinarily long.