
Merck said Tuesday that it has begun the process of submitting the evidence it will use to seek approval for its experimental Ebola vaccine, a crucial step in the drug maker’s long effort to bring the vaccine to market.
The company said it hopes to complete the filing process sometime next year.
The vaccine is currently being used in the troubling Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are currently no licensed Ebola vaccines. While there are a number of other experimental vaccines, the Merck product is the furthest along in the developmental pipeline, having been shown to be protective in a clinical trial in Guinea at the tail end of the devastating West African outbreak of 2014-2016.