A participant in Truro, Nova Scotia received mRNA-1469 on 3 August, the first human dose of Moderna's Bundibugyo vaccine candidate1. The Phase 1 study will enrol about 80 healthy adults across three Canadian sites. Phase 1 asks two things and no more: whether the vaccine is safe, and whether it raises an immune response. It cannot show protection, because nobody deliberately exposes a volunteer in Nova Scotia to a haemorrhagic fever virus.
CEPI has committed up to US$50 million to the programme, the largest slice of the $62 million it put across three Bundibugyo platforms on 1 June. The messenger RNA route is on the list for a reason familiar from 2020: once a manufacturer has the sequence, the design step is fast, and the slow parts are the trials and the plant. Speed at the design stage buys nothing if the clinical pathway still takes years, which is exactly the gap the cross-reactivity studies of licensed vaccines are trying to bridge in the meantime.
