MSF: Ebola Treatment Trials to Start at MSF Sites in December
November 13, 2014
GENEVA/NEW YORK—In the absence of specific treatments for Ebola, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières(MSF) announced today that it will host clinical trials in three Ebola treatment centers in West Africa. The separate trials, which are aimed at quickly finding an effective therapy that can be used against the disease, which has so far taken around 5,000 lives in the current outbreak in the region, will be led by three different research partners.

The French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) will lead a trial using antiviral drug favipiravir in Guéckédou, Guinea; the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) will lead a trial of convalescent whole blood and plasma therapy at the Donka Ebola center in Conakry, Guinea; and the University of Oxford will lead, on behalf of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC), a Wellcome Trust-funded trial of the antiviral drug brincidofovir at a site yet to be determined. The World Health Organization (WHO) and health authorities of the affected countries are also taking part in this collaborative effort.

“This is an unprecedented international partnership that represents hope for patients to finally get a real treatment against a disease that today kills between 50 and 80 percent of those infected,” said Dr. Annick Antierens, who coordinates investigational partnerships for MSF. “As one of the principal providers of medical care to Ebola patients in West Africa, MSF is taking part in these accelerated clinical trials to give people affected by the current outbreak a better chance of survival.”…