An Ebola vaccine that NewLink Genetics is helping to test shows great promise toward protecting people in Africa against the deadly virus, a national expert said.
The vaccine, one of two that could be approved within the next few months for broad use, was originally developed by the Canadian government. NewLink purchased licensing rights to it in 2010. That move brought little notice until Ebola broke out in West Africa last spring and spread farther than it ever had before.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the Ebola virus should be easier to defeat with a vaccine than the AIDS virus or the malaria parasite have been. Scientists have been toiling for years to devise vaccines against those diseases, which have killed millions of people.
