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Spanish researchers have begun work on the development of a vaccine that they hope will be effective against all strains of Ebola, announced their director Wednesday in Madrid. These researchers from the Madrilenian public hospital of October 12th have been working for months, in collaboration with two other institutions in the Spanish capital, on blood samples from three patients suffering from the virus and treated in Spain.
According to Rafael Delgado , director of this team of researchers, the three patients developed antibodies "very effective" against the disease but in "small quantity" and only effective against the Zaire strain.
The "challenge" of these researchers is now " to produce these antibodies on a large scale, through a vaccine "that can be effective against all strains of the virus, added Rafael Delgado, head of the microbiology department of this hospital.
According to Rafael Delgado, the difficulty lies in the fact that the Ebola virus protects itself with carapaceous proteins and exposes its vulnerable areas for a short period of time, which complicates the action of the immune system.
The microbiologist has indicated that, within a year, he hopes to have the results of the tests carried out on mice.
An experimental vaccine, bearing the technical name rVSVSV-ZEBOV, has already was developed in the wake of the terrible Ebola epidemic, the most violent in history, which hit West Africa between late 2013 and 2016, causing more than 11,300 deaths.
Administered in in the DRC, this vaccine, developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada – licensed by NewLink Genetics, which in turn licensed it to the Merck & Co group – was found to be "very effective" by the World Health Organization (WHO) but only against the Zaire strain.
The American laboratory Johnson & Johnson is developing an experimental vaccine against two strains.
Spain had registered 2014 the first contaminated person out of Africa. Teresa Romero, a caregiver, contracted hemorrhagic fever in Spain, treating a repatriated missionary from Sierra Leone in a Madrilenian hospital and died of the disease.
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