A Brit is to become the first in the world to trial a vaccine to protect against Ebola.
The vaccine is being co-developed by the United States National Institutes of Health and British drug firm GlaxoSmithKline.
The clinical trial is the first to test a potential vaccines aimed at preventing infection with the virus that has killed more than 2,400 people in the world’s biggest ever Ebola outbreak.
It will eventually involve 60 people.
The trial will be led by Prof Adrian Hill of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, which revealed that the first shot of the vaccine will be injected into a human volunteer next Wednesday.
It declined to reveal the name, age or gender of the volunteer.
The vaccine is designed to specifically target the Zaire species of Ebola - the one which had proved so deadly in West Africa.
This strain can have a death rate of 90%.
The trial is testing the vaccine on healthy volunteers in a bid to decide whether it is safe and whether it provokes a protective immune response.
Prof Hill said last month he wanted to recruit 60 healthy individuals from in and around Oxford, aged between 18 and 50.
GSK has said it plans to begin making up to about 10,000 additional doses of the vaccine at the same time as the initial clinical trials.
This means that if they are successful, the vaccine can be made available immediately for an emergency immunisation programme.