On a Thursday morning in Cairo, a small Egyptian drugmaker took on one of the most frightening viruses on the planet. Minapharm announced it is developing a vaccine against a deadly strain of Ebola called Bundibugyo — the same strain now tearing through the Democratic Republic of Congo in the largest outbreak that country has ever faced.
The company isn't starting from nothing. It received up to $16.5 million from an Oslo-based group called CEPI, or the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which backs vaccines for dangerous diseases. The money will push a candidate shot designed by ProBioGen, Minapharm's Berlin-based arm, through the laboratory stages and into a phase 1 clinical trial — that means small-scale testing on human volunteers to check that it's safe and that it stirs up the body's immune defenses. The trial is expected to take place in Africa, and right now there are no specific vaccines or treatments for Bundibugyo at all.
The numbers show just how urgent this is. Since the outbreak was declared on May 15, the DRC has recorded more than 5,600 confirmed cases and more than 2,700 deaths. The virus is spreading faster than efforts to stop it. Jean Kaseya, who heads the African Union's public health agency, put it plainly: "Bundibugyo virus is now driving the largest Ebola outbreak the DRC has ever faced."
What makes Minapharm's shot special goes beyond the science. It's about who is building the tools. "A vaccine candidate advanced by an African company is exactly the kind of capability our continent needs — not just for this outbreak, but so that Africa can develop and manufacture the tools it needs to protect its own people," said the director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Minapharm is one of five teams CEPI is funding in the race against Bundibugyo. The others use different technology: Moderna uses mRNA; the University of Oxford and Serum Institute of India work with the ChAdOx platform; and Hilleman and Public Health Vaccines both use rVSV. Minapharm uses a platform called MVA, and it's the only candidate designed to trigger both B-cells and T-cells, aiming for long-lasting immunity. CEPI hopes that having so many different approaches maximizes the odds that at least one — possibly two — vaccines will pass their trials and win approval from the World Health Organization.
Meanwhile, the WHO has recommended a full-scale human trial in the DRC of Ervebo, the only Ebola vaccine already approved. Ervebo is proven against the more common Zaire strain, and early animal data suggests it might also offer some protection against Bundibugyo.
That combination of a global safety net and a homegrown African contender offers a hopeful picture: the continent that is suffering the worst of Ebola may soon be the one helping to end it.