NewLink Genetics Corporation (NLNK)

[magnumbp]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/improved-ebola-situation-liberia-may-complicate-vaccine-trials/

It is a singular response to an enormous task: trying to test and scale up production of vaccines in a few months, a job that normally takes five to 10 years to achieve. The need for creative solutions has inspired executives of rival companies to openly share data and discuss using their products in combination. The hope: if neither of the frontrunners succeeds, maybe using company X’s vaccine as the prime and company Y’s as the boost might work. Discussions that "never happen" are happening now. “There is a willingness to consider trials that include combinations of the vaccines, to see how best they might be able to be used together, for example, in prime–boost strategies. This is very unusual. But it is going on,” says Ripley Ballou, vice president of biologics for U.K.-based GSK (aka GlaxoSmithKline), which owns the vaccine that is furthest along in this modified pipeline.

NewLink is talking with GSK about just such a strategy, if it is needed, Link acknowledges. "In my lifetime it's unprecedented to see this level of collaboration. It's the way, if the world was perfect, that maybe science would always work."

GSK’s vaccine, called cAd3-EBOV, was originally developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; GSK acquired the rights to it when it bought Swiss vaccine developer Okairos in 2013. It is an inactivated (killed) vaccine that uses a genetically modified chimp adenovirus to present an Ebola gene to the immune system.

The NewLink vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV, was designed by scientists at the Public Health Agency of Canada. It is composed of a live virus (modified vesicular stomatitis) coupled with the primary protein found on the Ebola virus’s surface. Vesicular stomatitis viruses—VSV for short—sicken livestock but are harmless to people. It is a replicative vaccine; the virus in it generates a low-grade infection that provokes the immune system to pump out antibodies against Ebola. But the vaccine cannot trigger the disease itself.