The Race for an Ebola Vaccine

Test tubes and vials sit in a laboratory at the Bavarian Nordic biotechnology company, which is working on an Ebola vaccine.PHOTOGRAPH BY FREYA INGRID MORALES/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY

Over the summer, as it became clear that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was one of the worst public-health emergencies in recent memory, executives at Merck met at the company’s New Jersey headquarters to figure out how to respond. Public-health organizations were also getting in touch with people at Merck, asking for help. At several meetings, the executives cycled through the possibilities: Should they donate medicines? Financially support the relief efforts? Help to develop treatments for Ebola?

Since then, America’s Ebola panic has subsided, but in West Africa the crisis remains urgent. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, where the cases have been concentrated, the World Health Organization describes transmission as “intense.” As of mid-November, Ebola has killed more than fifty-four hundred people. There remains no cure, nor is there a vaccine.

That might change soon. On Monday, Merck agreed to acquire the rights to an Ebola vaccine being developed by NewLink Genetics, a small firm in Ames, Iowa, with trials underway. GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson are also working on Ebola vaccines; trials have begun on the GlaxoSmithKline effort, and Johnson & Johnson expects to start testing in January. If one or more of the drugs proves effective and safe, an Ebola vaccine could be ready by as early as next year. (Companies are also developing drugs, such as the experimental ZMapp treatment, meant to treat Ebola patients once they have the disease, as Richard Preston wrote in an October article about researchers’ efforts to contain Ebola.)

There are plenty of reasons that large pharmaceutical companies haven’t developed Ebola drugs yet. In August, James Surowiecki explained in an article about the economics of Ebola that pharmaceutical companies, reasonably, tend to direct their R. & D. toward drugs that are most likely to deliver high returns on their investment. The ideal vaccine, from that perspective, would be used by a lot of people in relatively wealthy countries. The Gardasil vaccine against human papillomavirus, or H.P.V., is a Merck drug that falls into that category; it costs more than a hundred dollars per dose, and it brought in revenue of nearly two billion dollars last year. An Ebola vaccine is the opposite—used mostly in poor countries, and by relatively few people. As Surowiecki wrote, “A drug for Ebola looks like a bad investment.”

So why this race to create an Ebola vaccine among Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Johnson & Johnson—three of the world’s biggest drug manufacturers? For years, pharmaceutical companies didn’t invest much in vaccines, partly because they were so costly and complicated to produce: they’re often made out of live bacteria, which are notoriously difficult to work with. But, over the past several years, companies have realized that the difficulties of making vaccines could be an asset, because they can make it more difficult for generic-drug companies to create copycat versions than for prescription drugs. The vaccine market has also been growing more quickly than the prescription-drug market. The World Health Organization estimates, based on various sources, that global vaccine sales rose from five billion dollars in 2000 to twenty-four billion dollars last year.

In 2011, noticing these trends, Johnson & Johnson bought a vaccine company called Crucell, which was developing vaccines for high-profile diseases like malaria and H.I.V. Crucell also happened to be working on an Ebola vaccine. Then, in 2013, GlaxoSmithKline bought a vaccine company called Okairos. Okairos, too, was working on an Ebola vaccine.

For Merck, the situation is somewhat different. The company is making its big Ebola investment only now—and not simply by acquiring a company that happened to be working on an Ebola vaccine. But, similarly, much of the investment has already been taken care of, by NewLink and those who have funded its research. To acquire the rights to a vaccine is very different from committing to developing a vaccine from the beginning.

Of course, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck still have to invest in further developing the Ebola drugs and bringing them to market, which will take considerable resources. That’s where government and aid groups come in. They have committed funding and other resources to help to make the math work; not only are these groups expected to pay for some testing and production, but they would also help with logistical problems like getting the drugs to hard-to-reach areas and securing government approvals. “If Merck were to say, ‘We would fund this ourselves and do it ourselves,’ that’s not actually practical,” Mark Feinberg, the chief public-health and science officer for Merck Vaccines, told me.

Johnson & Johnson, for example, said in late October that it is committing up to [said](