No safety concerns yet in trials of GSK's Ebola vaccine

                                    GlaxoSmithKline's experimental Ebola vaccine in trials in the United States, Britain, Mali and Switzerland, and the safety data so far are "very satisfactory", scientists said on Monday.

                              The trials, which began just over two months ago, have been using healthy volunteers, rather than patients with Ebola, to test whether the vaccine is safe for humans.

                            The experimental shot uses a single Ebola virus gene from a chimpanzee virus to generate an immune response. Because it doesn't contain any infectious virus material, it can't infect those being vaccinated.

                          Adrian Hill, a professor at Oxford University who is leading the British arm of the trial, said 20 people at the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, 80 people at the University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for Vaccine Development in Mali, 34 people out of an eventual 120 at the University Hospital of Lausanne, and 59 out of an eventual 60 at the University of Oxford had so far been given the shot.

                            "The safety data here have looked very satisfactory so far," Hill said in a statement. "The response we have seen from people coming forward to take part has been remarkable."

                           The West Africa Ebola epidemic has now infected more than 13,000 people -- mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia -- and killed more than 5,000 of them, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

                         Several drug companies are now accelerating Ebola vaccine trials and the WHO has said it hopes one or more of the vaccines may be ready for some limited use in West Africa in early 2015.

                              GSK's vaccine and another leading candidate made by NewLink Genetics are already in human trials. Five more should begin testing in the first quarter of next year, according to the WHO. One from Johnson & Johnson will start trials in January.

                                Hill said the teams running the GSK vaccine trial should know by late December 2014 how the immune responses of Malian health care workers who have had the shot compare to those observed in adults given the vaccine in Britain and Switzerland.

97-Year-Old Grandmother Drives and have still more to have dreams

Many people have dreams they never realize. One woman, a 97-year-old great-grandmother from New Jersey, has a bucket list of goals she still wants to complete. This past week, she notched one of those goals off her list when she drove a semi-truck, a dream she’s had for most of her life.

Vera Abruzzi has wanted to drive one of the big rigs for about 80 years. Last Wednesday, with the help of her grandson, Gary Kadi, she saw that dream come true.

                      Kadi arranged for his beloved grandmother to take semi-truck driving lessons with Winsor’s Tractor Trailer Driving School. The instructor spent the day with her as Abruzzi learned to drive the 70-foot long rig. At the end of the day, she got to drive it around in a Linden, New Jersey parking lot.

                         Prior to her big day behind the wheel, the grandmother of 4 said she was looking forward to the experience probably as much as she’d looked forward to anything in all her 97 years. She explained that the 18-wheelers have always intrigued her and she’s longed to experience driving one firsthand.

                        Her instructor said she did just fine and handled the truck’s gear system well up to 20 mph. The great-grandmother of 7 told a WABV-TV reporter after the momentous drive that given the opportunity to take the rig on the highway, she would have gone 90 mph. She said she isn’t afraid of trying anything.

So what’s next for Abruzzi? She said she’d love to fly an airplane. Kadi said whatever she wants to do, the family is on it.

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