Several new clinical trials are either underway or slated to start soon that are all meant to test emerging new vaccines that may protect against the Ebola virus. If successful, these would be the first vaccines developed for the deadly virus that has claimed more than 4,500 lives in the last 10 months.

Johnson & Johnson are among the companies that are scheduled to begin testing. Their vaccine was developed alongside a Danish company called Bavarian Nordic. The vaccine would come in two parts that are delivered two months apart. Testing to determine the safety and efficacy of the vaccine is intended to begin in January.

They have also agreed to invest as much as $200 million to boost efforts at production of the vaccine.

Other companies are working as fast as they can to develop viable vaccines to protect against Ebola. GlaxoSmithKline is working on a vaccine that combines an altered cold virus from a chimpanzee and an Eboa protein. Clinical trials for this vaccine are currently underway in both Britain and Mali.

The Public Health Agency of Canada has been working on its own vaccine as well. This one is being tested with healthy volunteers in the U.S. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland.

The World Health Organization is working to aid in coordinating and expediting clinical trials in the United States, Europe and Africa. They hope to start larger scale testing on 20,000 healthcare workers in parts of West Africa at the start of the new year.

Testing will proceed on a grander scale if these initial tests demonstrate that the vaccines can safely produce an immune system reaction in volunteers participating in the small scale testing already underway.