“The world had little interest in Ebola in 1997, which is why cell biologist Nancy J. Sullivan thought she might be able to make a mark. Today, if the scientific world is to have an answer to the world’s severest Ebola outbreak, Dr. Sullivan’s work is likely to be at its center. A senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center, Dr. Sullivan has worked for years on a vaccine that has been proven to block Ebola in research monkeys. NIH is now racing to telescope what would have been a five- to 10-year testing plan into a few months. The vaccine is scheduled to undergo full human testing by early 2015 and could be in use potentially in time to help stem the disease in stricken West Africa. There is no assurance this vaccine will work. It has competition from at least one other vaccine, which is running a month or more behind, being tested by the Public Health Agency of Canada and NewLink Genetics Corp. Either one might stop Ebola, or neither. Experimental Ebola drugs are in the works to help treat existing cases. But these are generally in short supply, whereas GlaxoSmithKline PLC, which would be the manufacturer, thinks it could have one million doses of Dr. Sullivan’s vaccine available next year. That means, if all goes well, it could act as a firewall around a raging epidemic.”
