Researchers at the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) are working “urgently” to development 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 our ChAdOx-based monovalent Bundibugyo Ebolavirus candidate vaccine, ChAdOx1 BDBV,” a press release read.
The platform, which is a type of “viral-vector vaccine,” was used in the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 jab.
A statement from the Oxford Vaccine Group and @UniofOxford on vaccine efforts relating to the Bundibugyo Ebolavirus outbreak in the DRC.
Read the full statement below or on our website: https://t.co/JRSzsEdBhz pic.twitter.com/P1k8HrKfIp
— Oxford Vaccine Group (@OxfordVacGroup) May 22, 2026
A closer look at the press release:
At the same time, we are working with our global partners to accelerate the generation of supportive preclinical data for the clinical development and testing of the ChAdOx1 BDBV vaccine in outbreak scenarios, all whilst continuing to follow established scientific, ethical, and regulatory standards.
For more than 30 years, researchers at OVG, in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford, have worked on the development and testing of vaccines against infectious diseases. In response to the 2013–2016 West African Ebola outbreak, OVG and the Jenner Institute led a number of clinical trials testing vaccines against Ebolavirus, including an expedited Phase II clinical trial of an adenovirus/MVA Ebola vaccine regimen, contributing to its approval by the European Medicines Agency in 2020.
The research team embedded in these trials have 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 based in OVG and the Pandemic Sciences Institute were selected by the World Health Organization for inclusion in ring vaccination trials, should they have been needed.
The ChAdOx platform, a type of viral-vector vaccine, has previously demonstrated a vital role in the development of vaccines for emerging infectious diseases and responding to outbreak scenarios. This platform underpinned the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which was estimated to have saved more than 6 million lives in its first year of use globally.
“My hope is that this outbreak can be brought under control quickly and that vaccines are ultimately not needed. Nevertheless, our team and partners will continue working to ensure that potential vaccine options are available if they are needed,” said Professor Teresa Lambe OBE, Calleva Head of Vaccine Immunology at the Oxford Vaccine Group and Pandemic Sciences Institute.
“The ability to move rapidly in situations like this has been built on many years of vaccine research and close collaboration with our global partners,” Lambe added.
“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 epicentre of the outbreak, nearly 5 million people live amid ongoing conflict. Today, 1 in 4 people are in need of humanitarian assistance, and 1 in 5 are internally displaced,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“The violence is forcing people to flee, including health and humanitarian workers. This is severely impeding efforts to scale up Ebola contact tracing and identify infections early enough to provide supportive care. Ongoing insecurity and fear are also fueling mistrust within communities. @WHO
and humanitarian health partners maintain a presence across Ituri, including in some of the hardest-to-reach and most insecure areas. Communities are facing not only the threat of Ebola, but also a wide range of diseases,” he continued.
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 epicentre of the outbreak, nearly 5 million people live amid ongoing conflict. Today, 1 in 4… pic.twitter.com/hgIydPGZxD
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) May 24, 2026
NPR explained further:
The Congolese government first declared an outbreak on May 15. Since then, confirmed and suspected cases have popped up across an area of Congo larger than the state of Florida.
Neighboring Uganda has also registered five confirmed Ebola cases.
On Friday, the World Health Organization raised its risk level for the disease at a national level to “very high.”
“The potential of this virus spreading rapidly is high, very high, and that changed the whole dynamic,” Abdirahman Mahamud, WHO director of health emergency alert and response operations, told reporters.
Ebola is a viral disease that causes vomiting, fever and sometimes bleeding. It can take weeks to show symptoms and is often fatal.
Congolese health workers, UN staff and aid organizations rapidly launched a large-scale response against the disease after an outbreak was confirmed.
But Ebola was likely spreading for weeks — if not months, according to some estimates — before health authorities noticed it. This late diagnosis and the now unknown number of people who are infected will severely complicate the response.
The first known case was of a nurse who presented symptoms on April 24, in the city of Bunia, in Ituri province, in eastern Congo.
According to an internal report by the Congolese health ministry, the nurse was buried in the gold-mining town of Mongbwalu, in Ituri.
The town had had a spate of unexplained deaths throughout April, including of four health workers who died in the space of a single week.
