Three experimental Ebola vaccines trigger an immune response that lasts for more than two years against the deadly disease, researchers report.

In addition to being welcome news for the Ebola outbreak that’s now spreading throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo, this success story is spurring research into the development of similar vaccines for other infectious diseases, the researchers added.

In the new study, British scientists analysed blood samples taken from healthy volunteers awho had received one of the three Ebola vaccine regimens more than two years earlier.

The results showed that all three vaccines “were still producing a strong antibody response to the disease two-and-a-half years after immunisation, which is really good news,” said study co-author Katie Ewer, from Oxford University in the United Kingdom.