An Ebola vaccine being developed by Baltimore company Profectus BioSciences is effective against the strain of the virus that has ravaged West Africa, research to be published Thursday suggests — a milestone the company says is a first in the race to prevent outbreaks of the deadly disease.

While other leading vaccine candidates have progressed to human trials in Africa, published data on the protection they provide is based on tests exposing animals to a relatively mild laboratory version of the Ebola virus, or strains from previous outbreaks.

But Profectus' vaccine successfully shielded primates from a potent strain virtually identical to the one that has infected more than 25,000 people, researchers wrote in a study in the journal Nature.

That sort of evidence could be key in obtaining approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Dwindling counts of new Ebola cases in West Africa could make it difficult for other researchers to determine whether their vaccines prevented subjects from contracting the virus. They might have to rely on lab data, as Profectus has, to show that the treatments work.

Read more at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-profectus-vaccine-20150408-story.html