Here & Now

Ebola Vaccine A "Novel Breakthrough In The Medical World"

Frederica Freyberg:

Now to medical news and a look ahead to December, when a vaccine developed at UW-Madison will start human trials in Japan. That’s where up to 1,000 doses of Ebola vaccine will be sent from the Waisman Center at UW. The clinical trial will be led by some of the same UW scientists who work the lab where the vaccine was created. In 2015 researchers reported vaccinated monkeys were successfully protected from Ebola infection. Between 2014 and 2016, 11,000 people died in Ebola in West African countries including Liberia and Sierra Leone. UW-Madison pathologist Alhaji Njai is a native of Sierra Leone who has contributed to the vaccine effort. Thank you very much for being here.

Alhaji Njai:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

First, let’s start by asking what is Ebola and where did it come from?

Alhaji Njai:

Ebola is a filovirus. It’s known to belong to the viral hemorrhagic viruses. Very, very deadly, evolving out of Congo in eastern Africa and central Africa. And of course in West Africa in 2015, 2016 — in between 2013 to 2015, we had the first major outbreak and one of the biggest ever in the world.

Frederica Freyberg:

How easily is it spread?

Alhaji Njai:

Ebola is very, very deadly and it’s not as highly, highly contagious as like measles and others, but it is very deadly when somebody gets it through body fluids or contacts with sweat or saliva or any other things that are coming out of an infected person.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you are on our way to Sierra Leone tomorrow.

Alhaji Njai:

Right.

Frederica Freyberg:

And what will you do there?

Alhaji Njai:

So we continue to work, so since 2014, late end of 2014, December, we set up a functional lab system in Sierra Leone through a Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka’s group working on the vaccine, but also looking at some of the molecular causes, why does Ebola kill, why is Ebola so lethal and why do some people survive Ebola? So trying to understand more on sort of what are the host pathogen responses around it and then by so doing, we may be able to develop much more efficient, much more better novel therapies for Ebola.

Frederica Freyberg:

So in terms of the vaccine, how does that work?

Alhaji Njai:

So what we have here is actually — so much of the vaccine candidates out there are like fragments of the virus. What we have now is actually the whole Ebola virus minus the VP30, which is the gene responsible for Ebola to attach to human cells. So what we’ve done is just basically knock out that gene and then without that gene, the Ebola virus is unable to replicate and it’s also unable to attach to human cells.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how exciting is this prospect of a human vaccine for Ebola?

Alhaji Njai:

It is huge. It is huge. If you think about the deadly nature of this outbreak in 2015 and survivals and the trauma and other things, having a vaccine that works, and if we have it to work in phase one in December, that will be tremendous news for not just the medical world, but also for the people of Sierra Leone and west Africa because we know whenever Ebola hits, it has the likelihood of coming back.

Frederica Freyberg:

How will the human trials in Japan work? Who will get that? Tell us what that process is.

Alhaji Njai:

We're still working on that aspect of it, so it’s still — we’re trying to figure out the clinical trials, and how that will be worked out. So I think that’s not something we are clear on yet on how basically it’s going to work. Because really you really want to be able to know, you know, and a lot more of the information under the phase two aspect of things. But right now we don’t have a clear understanding of how it will work in Japan.

Frederica Freyberg:

And what is the global kind of reaction to the idea that this vaccine is out there and more than developed, but going to trial?

Alhaji Njai:

I think that this is tremendous. It is just very, very good news. A lot of people are actually excited because this is what I would say a first, real Ebola vaccine because we are utilizing the whole Ebola virus as against a protein fragment from another virus. So this is a real good breakthrough, but also a very novel breakthrough for the medical world.

Frederica Freyberg:

Dr. Njai, thanks very much.

Alhaji Njai:

Thank you very much for having me.