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31/05/2020

EUs’ Regulatory Panel Recommends Approval Of J&J's Ebola Vaccine




EUs’ Regulatory Panel Recommends Approval Of J&J's Ebola Vaccine
A recommendation for the approval of the two-dose experimental vaccine for Ebola in the European Union from Johnson & Johnson was made by a panel of the European health regulator on Friday.
 
An application for approval for the vaccine was submitted with the European Medicines Agency (EMA by J& in November. The vaccine functions by targeting the an Ebola strain that causes the disease in most people.
 
In February as the novel coronavirus started to spread across the world, the company had said that it was working to develop a coronavirus vaccine program making use of the same technology that it had used for this experimental drug for the Ebola virus.
 
Johan Van Hoof, managing director of J&J's Janssen unit said that the recommendation by the EU panel has confirmed the potential of the vaccine technology.
 
An agreement for helping out in the manufacturing of more than 1 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate with Emergent BioSolutions Inc was struck by the drug maker last month. The company has plans to begin human testing of its new coronavirus vaccine from September.
 
The latest recommendation for approval by the EU’s EMA's human medicines committee of the Ebola vaccine from J&J was preceded by the same committee recommending approval for the first Ebola vaccine, from Merck & Co Inc. in November 2019. Even though the final decision on approval for a vaccine is taken by the European commission (EC), generally the recommendations of the EMA are followed by it.
 
If the vaccine is approved by the EU, it could help to hasten the efforts of J&J to broaden the access to the vaccine for the people residing in the high-risk countries where Ebola has emerged as a problem in the past. It would also help the company to get registration in many of the African countries where the Ebola virus has been the most destructive, the company said.
 
In the current bout of an outbreak of Ebola, more than 3,400 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been infected with the disease which is the second highest number of such infections to the initial outbreak of the virus that wrecked havoc in the a number of West African countries between 2013 and 2016 in which more than 11,300 had been killed.
 
(Source:www.whtc.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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