Canada and the development of a vaccine for Bundibugyo virus
Vaccine clinical trials in Canada
Health Canada’s August announcement that Phase 1 clinical trials have been authorized in Canada for a Bundibugyo virus vaccine is a positive step towards adding a much-needed tool to the Ebola disease outbreak toolkit. However, it also serves as a reminder of how the Government of Canada has failed to provide sufficient support over the past two decades to ensure Canadian innovations, particularly for serious global public health concerns like Ebola disease, can get out of the lab and to the people who need them in a timely manner.
There is currently no approved vaccine for Bundibugyo virus — one of the viruses that can cause Ebola disease and which is responsible for the current Ebola disease outbreak with its epicentre in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. By the end of July 2026, the outbreak had become the second largest Ebola outbreak on record and continues to spread at an alarming rate.
The vaccine — being developed by the American pharmaceutical company Moderna — is one of four leading candidates for a Bundibugyo virus vaccine. All are being supported by the global partnership organization CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), which itself receives funding from Canada among other contributors. Like its flagship COVID-19 vaccine, Moderna’s Bundibugyo candidate is an mRNA vaccine. It is the second candidate to reach the clinical trials stage. The first was developed by Oxford University using the ChAdOx1platform — the same vaccine platform used for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine — and entered clinical trials in the UK a few weeks earlier.
The third and fourth candidates, which have yet to enter clinical trials, come from IAVI (International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) and Public Health Vaccines, respectively. Both use the rVSV platform, the same technology used in the first approved vaccine for the most common kind of Ebola disease (caused by Ebola virus). The rVSV platform was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. However, despite developing the rVSV platform over two decades ago, the Government of Canada has since been disappointingly passive getting other rVSV vaccines to the finish line.
Rather than build end-to-end capacityfrom the earliest stages of research through manufacturing the finished product, the Government of Canada has licensed its technology to third parties to bring rVSV-based vaccine candidates to market. This is despite profit-driven pharmaceutical companies deprioritizing diseases that cause outbreaks almost exclusively in low-income countries . This is evident with vaccines for Ebola disease. The initial license for PHAC’s rVSV vaccine portfolio was granted to a company that had never brought a product to market, and who let rVSV vaccines gather dust rather than move their development forward. Only during the West African Ebola epidemic was the rVSV portfolio dusted off and sublicensed to the pharmaceutical giant Merck, who ultimately brought the first effective Ebola vaccine (Ervebo) to market, albeit with a high price tag.
Lack of funding, lack of political will to support Canadian innovation
As MSF has previously highlighted, even after the success of the Ervebo vaccine, Canada did remarkably little to advance this homegrown technology from its public laboratory for other threats. These include the second most common form of Ebola disease (caused by Sudan virus), and diseases such as Marburg disease (caused by Marburg virus, a more distant relation to the viruses that cause Ebola disease), and Lassa Fever (a serious ongoing issue in countries like Nigeria). To its credit, in more recent years the Government of Canada has taken the positive step of licensing rVSV technology to non-profit organizations like IAVI. However, subsequent support to develop this innovation that originated in a Canadian government lab has come from other governments like the USA and European Union, rather than from Canada.
This reflects a longstanding problem. Over a decade ago, an internal PHAC analysis stated, “PHAC already has the technology to make the pan filovirus vaccine but not the money to produce one”, identifying the problem as a lack of political will. A pan filovirus vaccine — a vaccine that works for all species of Ebola virus, including Bundibugyo, as well as related viruses like Marburg — would be a phenomenal tool for global public health. Imagine an alternate timeline where strong political support over a decade ago had enabled generous funding to ensure this Canadian innovation with important global implications progressed rapidly. At the very least, we would be beyond Phase 1 trials today; perhaps we might even have had a pan filovirus vaccine ready to respond not only to the current outbreak, but other outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg disease caused by different viruses.
Innovative tools can only help if there is access
The clinical trials announcement raises another crucial issue: access to the final product. Even if a vaccine makes it from the lab to regulatory approval, it is only useful if it ultimately reaches those who need it. This aspect is oddly missing from the Health Canada press release, which focuses on regulatory approval in Canada, where the risk of Bundibugyo virus is extremely low. By contrast, Moderna’s announcement about the clinical trials includes a commitment to make at least 500,000 doses of the vaccine (if it is approved) available to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) at a more accessible price. This is a positive step, but the fact this commitment needs to be made explicit is a troubling indicator of who usually gets prioritized for access to innovative medicines. Indeed, even in the current announcement, the commitment to “timely” access to these doses for LMICs cannot be uncritically assumed to mean that the biosecurity stockpiles of rich countries willing to pay high prices won’t still be first in line.
It is also hoped that this commitment is binding and enforceable as part of Moderna’s agreement with CEPI. Moderna’s “patent pledge” for its COVID-19 vaccine is a prime illustration of companies reneging on their access promises, particularly when there is no way to enforce them . However, CEPI too has been criticized for not prioritizing access as much as it should.
The Bundibugyo outbreak must serve as a further reminder to the Government of Canada of the importance of supporting end-to-end innovation. This is especially true for diseases that are not prioritized by for-profit companies, despite their global health importance. Furthermore, public funding for such innovations, including when channeled via organizations like CEPI, should come with access conditions to ensure public investments prioritize protecting public health over subsidizing private wealth.
