Ottawa, Canada - Canada has authorized US pharmaceutical giant Moderna to begin clinical trials for a vaccine against the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, the country's health ministry announced on Tuesday.
The Phase 1 trial of the mRNA vaccine "will assess the candidate vaccine's safety, determine the right dosage range and identify any side effects," according to the Canadian Health Ministry.
No Ebola cases have so far been recorded in Canada. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), however, cases of the Bundibugyo strain have skyrocketed above 3,500 and have claimed the lives of more than 1,500 victims.
As part of the trial, a group of healthy participants will receive a dose of the vaccine to assess the antibody response to the Bundibugyo strain.
If the results are positive, the vaccine will advance to further clinical trials involving larger groups of participants.
The vaccine relies on the same mRNA technology used in Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine.
Canada, which closed its borders on July 20 to all foreign nationals who had recently been in the DRC, has reached an agreement with the company to manufacture the vaccine on Canadian soil if it enters circulation.
There is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo variant behind the latest Ebola outbreak, which was declared as such in May. Other vaccine candidates are also under development.
A vaccine described by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the "most promising," known as rVSV Bundibugyo, is to be developed by Singapore-based Hilleman Laboratories.
Meanwhile, in late July, a volunteer received the first dose of another Bundibugyo vaccine developed by the University of Oxford in Britain, which uses the same technology as AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine.