Thursday, August 28, 2014

Our big press teleconference announcing the beginning of the Ebola vaccine Phase 1 trial of the Chimp Adenovirus 3 vector with the Ebola GP bivalent gene insert. Trial to start on September 2 at NIH Clinical Center. Also coinciding with slightly later start of monovalent identical vaccine in the UK with Oxford, Wellcome Trust and extension into Mali and the Gambia. Also, we announced our collaboration with NewLink and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in a Phase 1 trial (in Silver Spring, MD with WRAIR) of the VSV – Ebola vaccine. Much press interest today with appearances on: Fox News Radio; Hearst TV; WTOP; MSNBC with Ronan Farrow; NBC Nightly News; The NewsHour; Cox TV; 24/7 National News Radio; CNN Anderson Cooper; Local Channel 9 News; AP TV.

Nature paper on deep sequencing by Pardis Sabeti from the Broad in Boston showed phylogenetic origin of virus as a single point source. In the paper, the woman who brought the virus from Guinea to Sierra Leone got is at a funeral where she tended to a body; however, 12 people from that funeral got infected from 2 lineages, probably all having gotten infected at the funeral. It seems to me that these women did not all touch “macroscopically visible feces, blood or vomitus on the body. Someone or more initially cleaned the body, but certainly some kissed or otherwise touched what appeared to be a clean body and got infected. Conclusion, it is likely than microscopic contamination with residual bodily fluids on what appears to be clean skin or surfaces could spread the virus. Hypothetical scenario → person is infected and in early stage, get diarrhea and wipes his anal area, contaminates his hands with microscopic fecal material and virus, washes or not his hands, but virus remains and he then shakes someone’s hands, serves someone food, etc. and transmission occurs I do not believe at all that it is transmitted by the respiratory route; however, inadvertent contamination of hands outside of the classical hospital setting should in my mind at least be considered as a potential route of transmission. Press interest continues with: Columbia (Bogota) Radio; VOA TV; NPR Weekend Edition with Scott Simon; NPR Science Friday; CNN with Jake Tapper; Reuters TV