It took 16 years of twists and turns. Over and over, Dr. Nancy Sullivan thought she was close to an Ebola vaccine, only to see the next experiment fail.
“A case of resuscitation more than once,” is how the National Institutes of Health researcher describes the journey.
But it is those failures that Sullivan credits for finally leading her to a vaccine promising enough to test in parts of West Africa ravaged by Ebola. Last week, volunteers in Liberia’s capital began rolling up their sleeves for the first large-scale testing of two potential Ebola vaccines, the one Sullivan developed at NIH and a similar one created by Canada’s government.
Sullivan just hopes it was in time to prove whether the shots really work.
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“Thank God we had some of these” underway, said Ebola expert Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, an early collaborator on the Canadian vaccine who helped with some of Sullivan’s initial work and now researches treatments. “You can’t do that research in six months.”
As the Liberian vaccine study gets under way, work hasn’t paused back in Sullivan’s lab. Her research in monkeys suggests long-lasting protection will require a special booster shot, something yet to begin Phase 1 safety testing in people. She goes to Congo, where Ebola first was discovered, about twice a year for research.
“It isn’t the case where you discover something and instantly move it to humans,” Sullivan wants the public to understand. “There are lots of pitfalls.”
