First trials to test ebola treatment to begin in West Africa
Doctors Without Borders will host the first clinical trials of experimental Ebola treatments, part of an effort to fast-track drugs to fight a disease that has killed more than 5,000 people and is threatening to spread in a fourth West African nation.
The three trials will start in December under different research partners, the medical aid charity said. There are no drugs on the market to treat Ebola, and supportive care has mostly consisted of isolating patients and giving them rehydration therapy and antibiotics. Separate studies are under way to test vaccines to prevent people from catching Ebola.
The French National Institute of Health and Medical Research will lead a treatment trial in Gueckedou, Guinea, using Fujifilm Holdings Corp.'s antiviral favipiravir, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. The University of Oxford will lead a trial of Chimerix Inc.'s antiviral drug brincidofovir at an undetermined site, and the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine will try therapy using Ebola survivors' blood at the Donka Ebola Center in Conakry, Guinea.
"Conducting clinical trials of investigational drugs in the midst of a humanitarian crisis is a new experience for all of us, but we are determined not to fail the people of West Africa," said Peter Horby, a professor of tropical medicine and global health at Oxford and chief investigator of the brincidofovir trials.
The latest outbreak of Ebola has claimed most of its victims in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The virus is threatening to spread in Mali, where a nurse died two days ago after treating a man from Guinea who died without being tested for Ebola and is thought to have spread the disease to members of his family, and a friend who has died.
The man died Oct. 27 and may have infected all four family members who drove him to Mali for treatment of kidney failure, as well as other relatives, according to the World Health Organization. The body of the man, a grand imam, was taken to a mosque in Bamako, Mali's capital, for ritual washing and then returned to the border village of Kouremale in Guinea for burial.
The spread to Mali came as Ebola was nearly considered by Doctors Without Borders to be under control in that country, as there hadn't been a case since a two-year-old girl brought to the country from Guinea died on Oct. 24.
In the treatment trials to begin next month, placebos won't be used, researchers involved in the testing said today at a press conference in Geneva. The Chimerix drug's trial will involve about 140 patients, and the Fujifilm medicine tests will be done on 200 patients, researchers said.
The Chimerix trial led by the University of Oxford is on behalf of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium, and is funded by the non-profit Wellcome Trust.
"It has been a privilege to witness the extraordinary willingness of all the partners in this initiative to step outside their comfort zones in order to fast track these critically important trials," Horby said.