Volunteers from front-line workers in the fight against Ebola are being enrolled in a new vaccine trial, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its partners, the Sierra Leone College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS) and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS).

"We hope this vaccine will be proven effective but in the meantime we must continue doing everything necessary to stop this epidemic — find every case, isolate and treat, safely and respectfully bury the dead, and find every single contact," said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.

The vaccine has already begun trials with more than 800 people in Africa, Canada, Europe, and the United States. Results from early studies to date of the vaccine show an acceptable safety profile and that it produces an immune response.

The much larger Sierra Leone trial, which goes by the acronym STRIVE, will enroll about 6,000 health and other front-line workers in the Western Area Urban district, which includes Freetown, Western Area Rural district, and certain chiefdoms in the Bombali, Port Loko, and Tonkolili districts.

Study participants will be placed in one of two time frames for vaccination, immediately or about six months later. All will get the vaccine and be followed for six months. The study will evaluate if and how well the vaccine worked by comparing rates of Ebola virus disease in those who are vaccinated to those who have not yet received the vaccine.

The rVSV-ZEBOV candidate vaccine uses a vesicular stomatitis virus carrying a non-infectious Ebola virus gene. The vaccine cannot cause Ebola virus disease but can potentially stimulate an immune response to protect against the disease.

The vaccine was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory and licensed to NewLink Genetics. In 2014, NewLink Genetics entered into a licensing and collaboration agreement with Merck.

"We don't know whether this vaccine will be the Ebola prevention tool we're all eager for, but we hope that what we learn from STRIVE will help us save lives during this and future Ebola outbreaks," said Anne Schuchat, M.D., director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

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