What will it take to get a vaccine for the Ebola strain driving the current outbreak?

A health worker from the Guinean Ministry of Health prepares to administer an anti-Ebola vaccine in Gueckedou, Guinea, on February 23, 2021, following an outbreak. CArol Valade/AFP/via Getty Images hide caption

The first Ebola vaccine was approved for use in 2019, three years after the horrific outbreak in West Africa that took more than 11,000 lives.

That vaccine is designed to target a different species of Ebola than the one that's rapidly spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Many researchers think the approved vaccine, called Ervebo, won't work very well against the rarer Bundibugyo species, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments.

This week, a pair of global vaccine non-profits are trying to jump start a Bundibugyo vaccine with an infusion of more than $100 million dollars.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation, or CEPI, announced a commitment of roughly $62 million to fast-track research and development for three vaccine candidates. And a separate, $40 million dollar commitment from Gavi , a global vaccine alliance, seeks to create a market for a vaccine, if it proves safe and effective.

"We know Ebola is a deadly killer, and we've seen over multiple outbreaks what a difference a vaccine makes, if it's matched to the Ebola strain," says Nicole Lurie, executive director for preparedness and response at CEPI. When she and her colleagues learned this outbreak was driven by the rarer Bundibugyo species, they began surveying the landscape of Bundibugyo-targeted vaccines in the works.

"We decided, because of the urgency, that we would go ahead and accelerate vaccine development, " she says.

Even with all this cash, it'll be months before researchers can figure out whether the vaccines in development can offer meaningful protection against this deadly disease — and even longer before they're widely used. But given that the DRC outbreak is already one of the largest on record and shows no sign of slowing down, any future vaccine could still make a difference.