NewLink Genetics, the corporation which licensed an Ebola vaccine developed by Canadian government scientists, has enough doses on hand to launch the first human safety trial of an Ebola vaccine this summer, its chief executive said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

The company has also lined up two contract manufacturing companies and possibly a third and will be able to produce tens of thousands of vaccine doses within "the next month or two," Dr Charles Link said in an interview, Reuters reported.

The largest Ebola outbreak in history, which has killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa, has lent an unprecedented urgency to efforts to develop vaccines and treatments, which for years had largely languished, according to Reuters.

Last week, the Ames, Iowa-based company's wholly owned subsidiary, BioProtection Systems Corp, received $1 million from the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency for more preclinical toxicology studies, including stepped-up manufacturing, to allow human trials to begin quickly, Reuters reported. The vaccine was developed by scientists at the Public Health Agency of Canada.

"DTRA said, 'we want this to move quickly,'" Link said, according to Reuters. "Before that, I'd have said it would take eight to 10 months before we could launch human studies, but now it's a matter of weeks."

Only one treatment, made by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, had even begun human safety trials, while the others had been tested only in non-human primates, Reuters reported.

In addition to NewLink, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin a human safety trial of an experimental vaccine, possibly as soon as next month, according to Reuters.

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that two experimental Ebola vaccines were set to enter clinical trials in the coming weeks and that there could be enough early-stage data to consider their emergency use late this year, Reuters reported.

"There is a way to fast-track clinical trials," WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny said, according to Reuters.