Cairo: An African pharmaceutical company, Minapharm Group, has secured about 16.5 million dollars from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to advance a vaccine candidate against Bundibugyo ebolavirus into clinical trials. According to News Agency of Nigeria, Minapharm Group and its Berlin-based subsidiary, ProBioGen, made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the funding will support the vaccine candidate through preclinical development and its advancement into an early-stage human clinical trial.
NAN reports that the phase one clinical trial will assess the safety of the vaccine candidate and its ability to generate an immune response, with the trial expected to take place in Africa. The vaccine candidate is developed by ProBioGen using its proprietary modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA-CR19) vaccine platform, which is based on a highly attenuated poxvirus vector that is unable to replicate in human cells but can deliver vaccine antigens to stimulate an immune response.
According to the statement, the candidate is designed to stimulate both B-cell and T-cell immune responses, which can provide comprehensive and longer-lasting immunity against Bundibugyo ebolavirus. The development comes as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) battles its largest Ebola outbreak on record, driven by the Bundibugyo strain. The Minapharm candidate is the fifth Bundibugyo-specific vaccine candidate to receive CEPI support as part of efforts to accelerate the development of vaccines capable of controlling the outbreak and preparing for future epidemics.
CEPI said its goal was to advance at least two Bundibugyo vaccine candidates to Emergency Use Authorisation and World Health Organisation (WHO) prequalification. Dr Richard Hatchett, CEPI Chief Executive Officer, emphasized the growing capacity for African-led vaccine innovation, stating that CEPI funding to Minapharm harnesses the growing strength of African-led innovation to help confront this increasingly severe outbreak and prepare for future threats.
Dr Wafik Bardissi, Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Minapharm and Chairman of ProBioGen, highlighted the company’s experience in biologics development and manufacturing. Bardissi said the programme would combine Minapharm’s manufacturing capabilities in Egypt with ProBioGen’s scientific and technological expertise in Germany, demonstrating the strength of their capabilities across the full biologics continuum.
Dr Jean Kaseya, Director-General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), welcomed the initiative, describing it as an important step toward strengthening Africa’s capacity to respond to outbreaks. The statement said that under the programme, ProBioGen will generate the recombinant MVA drug substance under Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines at its facility in Germany, which will then be shipped to Minapharm’s facility in Cairo, Egypt, for formulation into the finished vaccine for testing.
CEPI said that if the Phase one trial produced positive results, it expected to work with Minapharm and ProBioGen to support later-stage clinical trials. The organisations are committed to working towards a rapid and affordable supply of the vaccine to affected countries and populations if it is shown to be safe and effective. CEPI’s Bundibugyo vaccine development programme has also supported candidates using mRNA, ChAdOx, and recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) technologies to increase the likelihood that at least some candidates will prove safe and effective against the virus.
For Africa, the Minapharm programme represents not only an attempt to develop a vaccine against the current Bundibugyo outbreak but also an opportunity to strengthen local capacity for vaccine research, development, and manufacturing. NAN reports that Bundibugyo virus is one of the species of Ebola virus that causes Ebola disease, and unlike the Zaire ebolavirus, there is currently no licensed vaccine or specific treatment for Bundibugyo virus. The current outbreak was first detected in the DRC in May 2026, leading to a rapid spread and a public health emergency declaration by the WHO, with significant challenges in containing the outbreak.