Bavarian Nordic Initiates Phase I Clinical Trial for the Ebola Vaccine Regimen of MVA-BN Filo and Janssen's AdVac Technology

Bavarian Nordic has announced the initiation of a Phase I, first-in-human clinical trial of the preventative Ebola vaccine regimen consisting of MVA-BN Filo and the AdVac technology from Crucell Holland BV, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. Recruitment in the trial is underway, and the first volunteers have received their initial vaccine dose. Enrollment is expected to be completed by the end of January.

The trial, which is led by the Oxford Vaccines Group, part of the University of Oxford, Department of Paediatrics, will evaluate the safety and tolerability of the heterologous prime-boost vaccination regimen in which patients are first given a dose to prime the immune system, and then a boost intended to enhance the immune response over time. The study will enroll 72 healthy adult volunteers into four groups receiving different regimens combining the two vaccine components. This will allow the investigators to identify the most immunogenic vaccination order and the optimal timing in the heterologous prime-boost regime. 

Additional clinical studies are planned to begin in the US later this month and soon after in Africa. The results from these studies, if positive, will allow for the initiation of Phase II and Phase III clinical trials in the coming months.

Under the existing supply contract with Janssen, Bavarian Nordic has now produced 400,000 doses of its MVA-BN Filo component that form part of the prime boost vaccination regimen which will become available for use in large-scale clinical trials by April 2015. Based on the promising yield from the manufacturing of the first batches of MVA-BN Filo, the company now expects to produce and deliver a total 2 million doses under the contract, where it had previously expected approximately 1 million doses.

"This first-in-human trial of this Ebola vaccine regimen is a testament of the accelerated efforts by Bavarian Nordic, Johnson & Johnson, the public health authorities and other key stakeholders to make the vaccines broadly available to protect families and frontline health care professionals," said Paul Chaplin, President and CEO of Bavarian Nordic. "The commitment made by Johnson & Johnson to accelerate and expand the development and production of our joint Ebola vaccine program has allowed us to work at an unprecedented pace to manufacture our MVA-BN Filo component to be released for broad application in clinical trials, after successful completion of the initial safety trials."