US-based Johnson & Johnson (J&J) have announced an investment of more than $200m, in a bid to speed up the Ebola vaccine programme at its Janssen Pharmaceutical companies.

J&J collaborated with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as with key stakeholders, governments, and public health authorities, on the clinical testing, development, production and distribution of the vaccine regimen.

The research collaboration is for a monovalent vaccine targeting the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. It will also focus on the development of a multivalent vaccine against other virus strains that cause disease in humans, including Ebola and Marburg viruses.

Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky said: "We are urgently working to provide our vaccine expertise, production capabilities, our people and resources to address the Ebola crisis.

"Our innovation model enables us to quickly mobilise our extensive resources to collaborate with health authorities and governments and other experts to help contain this disease, save lives, and protect the health and lives of those at risk."

Discovered in a collaborative research programme with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the vaccine regimen combines a Janssen preventative vaccine with Denmark-based Bavarian Nordic's vaccine.

The regimen includes two vaccine components, which are based on AdVac technology from Crucell Holland, part of Janssen Pharmaceutical companies, and the MVA-BN technology from Bavarian Nordic.

In preclinical studies, the combination vaccine regimen demonstrated positive results. Plans are underway for the regimen to evaluate safety and immunogenicity in healthy volunteers in Europe, the US and Africa in early January.

Janssen plans to produce more than one million doses of the vaccine regimen in 2015, of which 250,000 will be used for broad application in clinical trials by May 2015.