The Sabin Vaccine Institute's two cAd3 filovirus vaccine candidates — one for Marburg, one for Sudan ebolavirus — remain in Phase 2 clinical trials at Makerere University Walter Reed Project in Kampala, with the Sudan Phase 2 launched in July 2024 and the Marburg Phase 2 already enrolment-complete. [1] Neither protects against Bundibugyo ebolavirus, the strain driving the current Uganda outbreak. There is no clinical-stage Bundibugyo-specific candidate at any sponsor on Monday morning. A Phase 1 for any new candidate would take roughly six to twelve months to enrol.

Sunday's brief on the Saturday pipeline read named the gap between the two real Phase 2s and the strain that is killing people. Saturday's Africa CDC emergency briefing in Kampala — the second of the weekend — produced the structural answer through Shanelle Hall's PBS interview line that "no vaccine is being actively considered" for Bundibugyo. [2] The Memorial Day holiday weekend has not moved a sponsor announcement; Sabin's institutional X handle still redirects to LinkedIn and Bluesky and has not posted on the Bundibugyo question in the ten days the paper has been counting.

The cAd3 platform is the same chimpanzee adenovirus type 3 family the two real Phase 2s use, but each candidate is built for a specific glycoprotein and the cross-protection data does not yet exist for Bundibugyo. [3] CEPI's pipeline page lists no Bundibugyo entry on Monday morning; BARDA's medical countermeasure portfolio has the same gap. The "no vaccine being actively considered" line is, ten days into the Uganda outbreak, the operative procurement-ledger sentence. The next test is whether any sponsor moves a press line between Monday's holiday close and Tuesday's open.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago