Oxford team takes Ebola vaccine to trials stage

ProBioGen, workers in complex biologics development and manufacturing, made the announcement recently that the Jenner Institute, Oxford University, UK have proceeded into clinical trials with an investigational vaccine against Ebola virus disease, produced on its proprietary, continuous muscovy duck AGE1.CR.pIX cell line.

Professor Adrian Hill, Director from Oxford’s Jenner Institute commented: “Production of the first ever batch of MVA for a clinical trial using a cell line is a milestone in the development of this important vaccine technology.

The vaccine candidate, a modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) Ebola Zaire vaccine (MVA EBOZ) was produced by Emergent BioSolutions at a 200 litre scale to supply the Phase 1 clinical trial.

“This new process, which will allow very large scale production, will be of value not only for Ebola prevention, but also for a wide range of other disease indications including malaria and tuberculosis vaccination,” Hill added.

Dr Volker Sandig, ProBioGen’s Chief Scientific Officer, added: “It is very satisfying to see that our broadly applicable vaccine production platform is instrumental to efficiently supply urgently needed human vaccines available to patients world-wide.

“Our AGE1.CR manufacturing platform offers shorter response times, full industrial bioreactor scalability and therefore much greater flexibility, compared to traditional vaccine production processes depending on embryonated chicken eggs.”