Last year the institute was given  access to two devils from the insurance population and injected them  with the  first potential facial tumour disease vaccine.

The devils were injected with irradiated facial tumour disease cells and have since responded positively.

Yesterday  team leader Professor Greg Woods said the devil pair would receive ongoing injections and were expected to be released into the wild in September or October this year.

However, more test subjects were required to determine the overall effectiveness of the ‘‘immunisation protocol’’.

‘‘We haven’t seen enough to say the whole disease is cured just yet,’’ he said.

‘‘We have only just started to see results from the devils who received the treatment last year, so to be sure, we need to increase testing to get a better idea of how it is working – we just don’t know yet.’’

Professor Woods said immunisation injections would be given to the 14 new test subjects in the coming month.

He said the devils would be kept in captivity at the Menzies Research Institute where they would receive injections each month, before receiving a ‘‘booster’’ injection upon their release into the wild sometime in the future.

‘‘We’re still very much in the experimental stage. But rather than using laboratories to conduct research, we’ve been fortunate enough to receive access to members of the insurance population,’’ he said.

‘‘We’re in continual discussions with the Save the Tasmanian Program and we will assess the situation month to month.’’