As the number of cases in the biggest ever Marburg virus outbreak, in Angola, passed 400, researchers at the Canadian National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba, reported on Sunday that they have developed the first vaccine able to protect monkeys from the virus.
The team made the vaccine by replacing the surface protein on the virus that causes vesicular stomatitis, a rare human disease, with surface proteins from Marburg. If surface proteins from Ebola are used instead, the virus protects monkeys against Ebola, though it is not the first vaccine to do this (Nature Medicine, DOI: 1038/nm1258).
