Researchers at the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) are working urgently to develop a vaccine for Bundibugyo Ebolavirus amid an outbreak in Africa.
“In response to the current Bundibugyo Ebolavirus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) is working urgently with Oxford’s own Clinical BioManufacturing Facility and the Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. (SIIPL), to rapidly produce and scale doses of their ChAdOx-based monovalent Bundibugyo Ebolavirus candidate vaccine, ChAdOx1 BDBV,” a press release stated.
The platform, which is a type of viral-vector vaccine, was used in the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 jab.
For over three decades, researchers at OVG in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford have worked on developing vaccines against infectious diseases. During the 2013–2016 West African Ebola outbreak, OVG and the Jenner Institute led clinical trials testing Ebolavirus vaccines, including an expedited Phase II trial for an adenovirus/MVA Ebola vaccine regimen that contributed to its approval by the European Medicines Agency in 2020.
The research team has continued developing vaccines against multiple filoviruses, including Sudan Ebolavirus and Marburg virus. During outbreaks in Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, and Tanzania between 2022 and 2025, vaccines designed and tested by Professor Teresa Lambe and her team at OVG and the Pandemic Sciences Institute were selected by the World Health Organization for ring vaccination trials.
The ChAdOx platform has previously played a vital role in developing vaccines for emerging infectious diseases. It was used to create the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which is estimated to have saved more than six million lives globally in its first year of use.
“My hope is that this outbreak can be brought under control quickly and that vaccines are ultimately not needed,” said Professor Teresa Lambe OBE, Calleva Head of Vaccine Immunology at the Oxford Vaccine Group and Pandemic Sciences Institute. “Nevertheless, our team and partners will continue working to ensure that potential vaccine options are available if they are needed.”
“The ability to move rapidly in situations like this has been built on many years of vaccine research and close collaboration with global partners,” Lambe added.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reported, “As surveillance efforts have been scaled up in the DRC Ebola response, more than 900 suspected cases have been identified so far, including 101 confirmed cases. In Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, nearly 5 million people live amid ongoing conflict. Today, one in four people are in need of humanitarian assistance, and one in five are internally displaced.”
“The violence is forcing people to flee, including health and humanitarian workers,” Ghebreyesus said. “This severely impedes efforts to scale up Ebola contact tracing and identify infections early enough for supportive care. Ongoing insecurity and fear also fuel mistrust within communities. WHO and humanitarian partners maintain a presence across Ituri, including in the hardest-to-reach and most insecure areas.”
The Congolese government declared an outbreak on May 15. Since then, confirmed and suspected cases have appeared across a region of Congo larger than the state of Florida. Neighboring Uganda has also registered five confirmed Ebola cases. On Friday, the WHO raised its risk level for the disease to “very high” at the national level.
“The potential of this virus spreading rapidly is high, very high,” said Abdirahman Mahamud, WHO director of health emergency alert and response operations. “That changed the whole dynamic.”
Ebola is a viral disease that causes vomiting, fever, and sometimes bleeding. Symptoms can take weeks to appear and are often fatal. Congolese health workers, UN staff, and aid organizations launched a rapid response after the outbreak was confirmed. However, Ebola may have been spreading for weeks—or even months—before authorities noticed it, according to some estimates. This late diagnosis and the unknown number of infected individuals will severely complicate the response.
The first known case involved a nurse who presented symptoms on April 24 in Bunia, Ituri province, eastern Congo. According to an internal report by the Congolese health ministry, the nurse was buried in Mongbwalu, a gold-mining town in Ituri. The town had experienced unexplained deaths throughout April, including four health workers who died within a single week.
