Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders (MSF) have announced that three trials of Ebola therapies will begin in West Africa this December.
The trials will test the effects of a vaccine and two experimental drugs shortlisted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), in an attempt to address the deadly Ebola epidemic that has so far claimed more than 5,000 lives in the current outbreak region.
“This is an unprecedented international partnership which represents hope for patients to finally get a real treatment against a disease that today kills between 50 and 80 per cent of those infected,” said Dr Annick Antierens, investigational partnership coordinator for MSF.
MSF and partners including various academics, pharmaceutical companies and the WHO are holding two of the trials in Guinea, but the location of the third trial is still yet to be determined.
In Guéckédou, Guinea, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) will run a trial of the antiviral agent favipiravir, which has been developed by the Japanese company Toyama Chemical.
Also in Guinea, a trial led by the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine will investigate the effects of administering blood products containing antibodies from Ebola survivors to patients at the Donka Ebola centre in Conakry.
The third trial, funded by the Wellcome Trust, will test the antiviral therapy brincidofovir, which has been developed by Chimerix in North Carolina. This trial will be led by Oxford University on behalf of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC).
The experimental drugs favipiravir and brincidofovir were selected from a range of promising drugs shortlisted by the WHO, based on close examination of their safety and efficacy profiles, availability and ease of administration.
However, the drugs have not been subjected to the same level of rigorous animal and human testing before being administered to sick people, as they would in a conventional trial. The drugs will also not be denied to anyone participating as a member of a control group. In an epidemic so likely to claim lives, many consider it unethical and impractical to withhold treatments that could be effective.
“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,” says Peter Horby, Chief Investigator of the ISARIC-led trial.
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