A vaccine for the lethal Marburg virus has shown huge promise in early human trials with all participants easily tolerating the shot, and showing robust antibody responses.

Developed by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) an additional Phase 1 safety trial is set to be performed in Kenya, Uganda, the US, and Ghana as it moves towards a tentative, yet hopeful future.

If approved, it would be the only effective response to outbreaks of Marburg.

Marburg is a filovirus from the same family as ebola—to give some indication of its danger. Symptoms are largely the same, and the death rate is 23-90% depending on the indivudal's constitution. It's believed the virus made the jump to humans from infected bats in sub-Saharan Africa.

The US population has heard so much about mRNA vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic that most people on the street could probably write a doctoral disertation on them. However NIAID's new jab is a little more traditional, using a deactived copy of a virus, in this case a Chimpanzee adeno-virus called cAd3, with copies of the Marburg glycoprotein on its exterior.

In this study, 40 healthy adult volunteers were enrolled at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Clinical Trials Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Because the first trial is to document safety, low doses were used in an escalatory manner.

One group of 20 took a low dose, and another took a relative high dose. Three participants received the lower dose. Then, when they did not exhibit severe adverse reactions after the first seven days, the trial proceeded to enroll the remaining 17 volunteers.

95% of the participents exhibited a robust immune responce to the Marburg glycoprotein, which declined to 70% over a 48-week time horizon. One participent of the higher dose group got a fever, but it dissipated the following day, report the researchers.

The research on the trial was published in The Lancet.

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