BBC|The devastation of the Ebola outbreak in parts of West Africa has been one of the most shocking and distressing stories of the year.
Tonight there is a glimmer of hope – the first evidence that a vaccine could be available for health workers and others battling to bring the virus under control.
Ultimately, it could mean a vaccine for everyone in areas at risk.
Sir Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GSK, told the BBC that new clinical data published tonight was “very encouraging” and that a viable vaccine could be available in the second half of next year – If these early trials continue to provide positive results.
‘Very encouraging’
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in America has just released the first trial data for the vaccine that GSK is working on in its laboratories in Italy and Belgium.
Twenty adults were tested and an immune response to Ebola was prompted in each of them. The vaccine was also “well tolerated” by each of the people tested.
“It’s a very encouraging first signal,” Sir Andrew told me.
“Whether it’s a breakthrough depends on making sure that all the rest of data over the next few weeks and months is in line. But this certainly gives us very significant cause for optimism.
“We’ve been looking at a potential Ebola vaccine, we’ve been looking at its basic safety and whether or not it can generate an immune response in healthy volunteers – and the data is very encouraging.
“But we need to put it into context – this is a very accelerated development programme and this is the first bit of data.
“It’s the first piece of what will be a jigsaw of information that we are going to gather over the next five or six weeks before we move to the next stage.”
Further trials
“We are busy working out how we scale up manufacturing capacity, so that as we move into the second half of next year we would be in a position to manufacture very large quantities”
Of course, as Sir Andrew says, any developments must be kept in perspective and there are a number of other trials still to report this year.
Any of those could throw up major problems in the vaccine’s progress