First person in UK trial to get experimental Ebola shot next week

By Kate Kelland

LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The first human volunteer in afast-tracked British safety trial of an experimental vaccine tofight Ebola is to be injected with the shot next week,organisers of the trial said on Friday.

The candidate Ebola vaccine is being co-developed by theUnited States National Institutes of Health and the Britishdrugmaker GlaxoSmithKline.

The British trial, which will ultimately involve 60 people,is part of a series of safety tests of potential vaccines aimedat preventing infection with the virus that has killed more than2,400 people in West Africa this year in the world's largestEbola outbreak on record.

The trial will be led by Professor Adrian Hill of the JennerInstitute at Oxford University, which said on Friday the firstshot is scheduled to be given to a human volunteer next week.

It gave no gender, age or other details of the volunteer,and said the planned injection day of Wednesday, Sept. 17, mayalso be subject to change.

The vaccine is designed to specifically target the Zairespecies of Ebola - the one circulating in the current WestAfrica epidemic. This strain can have a mortality rate of up to90 percent, according to the World Health Organisation.

The trial is testing the vaccine on healthy volunteers withthe goal of determining whether it is safe and whether itprovokes a protective immune response.

Hill said last month he was looking to recruit 60 healthyindividuals from in and around the university town of Oxford,aged 18 to 50, to take part.

He said there were no concerns that any of the subjects willcatch Ebola, since the vaccine contains no infectious Ebolavirus material. The only Ebola component is a gene for a proteinthat sits on the virus's surface - and that protein does notcause illness.

The aim is to complete the tests by the end of 2014, afterwhich vaccines could be deployed on an emergency basis.

GSK has said it plans to begin making up to about 10,000additional doses of the vaccine at the same time as the initialclinical trials, so that if they are successful, the vaccinecould be made available immediately for an emergencyimmunisation programme.

The WHO said on Friday the number of Ebola cases in WestAfrica is growing faster than authorities can manage them andurged health workers from around the world to go to the regionto help. (Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)