Pan Ebola Vaccine Innovative Approach (PEVIA) action

Ebola Virus (EBOV), a member of Filoviridae family of viruses, is one of the most dangerous microorganisms in the world, causing severe hemorhagic fevers in humans and non-human primates with high case fatality. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, caused by Ebola Zaire strain, gained widespread attention as it took a different pattern and has reached historic proportions, characterized by a rapid and larger spread beyond Africa, and a greater magnitude than all the other outbreaks combined, underscoring its serious threat to the public health. No vaccines or antiviral drugs currently approved for prevention or treatment of Ebola infections in humans.

However, the severity of the recent Ebola outbreak and the potential risk of global spread, has spurred research for the rapid development of safe and effective preventive Ebola vaccine. Such a vaccine, that can rapidly induce strong and long-lasting protective immune responses against all main Ebola strains and that can be readily produce and deployed in the field, is needed to protect people in endemic regions in an event of an outbreak but also to protect healthcare workers caring for Ebola patients who are at the highest risk of infection.

The objective of the PEVIA project is the development of a new 2nd generation of preventive pan-Ebola vaccine based on two complementary and synergistic vaccine approaches:

A  recombinant native Ebola GP-based vaccine, and a long synthetic peptides (LSP)-based vaccine containing multiple overlapping CD4+and CD8+T-cell epitopes derived from the Ebola GP and nucleoprotein (NP) and highly conserved between all main Ebola strains.

The prime-boost combination of these two vaccines will offer safe, strong, specific, efficient, high quality and long-lasting B and T-cell immune protection against major strains of Ebola virus, both identified as fundamental to protect against the EBOV.#