Richard Hatchett, head of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, believes Ebola Bundibugyo vaccines could be ready for trials within a couple of months—a timeline that would have seemed impossible just years ago. His organization is putting $60 million behind that ambition, funding three vaccine developers in a race against a virus that has devastated eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with a mortality toll that underscores the stakes.
The Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak, now declared a public health emergency by global health agencies, has confirmed 282 cases in Congo with 42 deaths, and prompted around 1,100 suspected cases according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Nine additional cases have been confirmed in Uganda, including one death. What makes this outbreak particularly urgent is that no approved vaccines or treatments exist for this strain—a gap that CEPI is now working to close.
The bulk of CEPI's funding, up to $50 million, is directed to Moderna's investigational Ebola Bundibugyo vaccine candidate, which will support preclinical and early clinical development, manufacturing, and progression to later-stage trials if early data prove promising. Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel told Reuters that his company has "worked on Ebola in preclinical models showing great results," and emphasized the goal of creating a vaccine that prevents disease while simplifying the dosing strategy—a particular challenge given the virus's lethality. Whether the vaccine will require one or two doses remains uncertain and will be determined during phase 1 trials, which Bancel said would need to take place in Africa.
CEPI is also investing up to $8.6 million in a shot developed by the University of Oxford and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, and an initial $3.2 million for a vaccine developed by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. IAVI's single-dose candidate uses the same technology as Merck's approved vaccine Ervebo for the Zaire strain of Ebola, and has shown survival benefit in animal studies. Oxford's candidate, ChAdOx1 Bundibugyo, employs the same platform as the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Both have track records of speed: Hatchett noted that Oxford and Serum demonstrated during a Rift Valley Fever outbreak in Mauritania and Senegal last year that they could produce doses ready for trial in around six weeks—far quicker than typical development timescales that have historically stretched to years.
Yet moving fast comes with complications. IAVI CEO Mark Feinberg pointed out that it remains unclear which partners will be responsible for organizing or conducting clinical trials, and he cautioned that multiple studies would be needed and cost tens of millions of dollars before entering the clinic. The WHO, which backed studies during the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak, has signaled it won't assume that sponsorship role in the future.
Even once a vaccine succeeds, Hatchett emphasized, access becomes the next defining challenge. During the 2018-2020 Ebola Zaire outbreak in a similar region of Congo, 300,000 doses of Ervebo were needed to bring the outbreak under control—a figure that hints at the scale of distribution required. The commitment doesn't stop with CEPI: global vaccine alliance Gavi pledged up to $50 million to the response, and the World Bank's Pandemic Fund announced up to $220.6 million in grants, signaling that the international community recognizes both the urgency and the complexity of the work ahead.