UK begins trials of Ebola vaccine developed in just eight weeks

The United Kingdom has begun clinical trials of an Ebola vaccine that was developed in just eight weeks using artificial intelligence to design the antigen, a speed that researchers say could transform the world's ability to respond to emerging infectious diseases.

The vaccine, developed by a consortium that includes Oxford University, the UK Health Security Agency and the pharmaceutical company Moderna, uses the same messenger RNA technology that was proven during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the development timeline — from genomic sequence of the current outbreak strain to first-in-human dosing — shatters the previous record for vaccine development, which was the 11 months achieved for the first Covid vaccines in 2020.

The acceleration was made possible by AI tools that can predict, within hours, which viral proteins will provoke the strongest immune response. Those tools, developed by Google DeepMind and several academic groups, have reduced the vaccine design phase from months to days. The remaining time was consumed by the regulatory approvals and manufacturing steps that remain necessary regardless of how quickly a vaccine is designed.

The trial, which is being conducted at five sites across the UK, will enrol 120 healthy volunteers and is expected to produce initial results within three months. If the vaccine is shown to be safe and immunogenic, it could be deployed to the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than 180 cases have been reported and 67 people have died.

The achievement has been hailed as a milestone in pandemic preparedness. The director of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations said the eight-week timeline demonstrated that the world now had the tools to respond to new pathogens at a speed that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.