Ebola drugs prove 90% effective in clinical trial in DRC

pharmafile | August 13, 2019 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development |  Congo, DRC, Ebola, clinical trials, infectious diseases, niaid, pharma 

Health professionals in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are now offering two experimental drugs to people infected with Ebola, after they proved highly effective in ensuring survival in a multi-drug clinical trial.

Regeneron’s combination of three monoclonal antibodies, REGN-EB3, and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s (NIAID’s) drug mAB114, showed respective survival rates of 71% and 66% in a clinical trial in the DRC.

Meanwhile, the survival rate for those who received either treatment, shortly after being infected when levels of the virus in the blood were low, was 90%.

Sabue Mulangu, an infectious-disease researcher at the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) in Kinshasa in the DRC, and an investigator on the trial, commented: “It’s really good news. Now we will be able to stress to people that more than 90% of people survive if they come into the [Ebola treatment unit] early and get this treatment.”

The current Ebola outbreak in the DRC is the second-worst in history, with more than 2,800 infected and nearly 1,900 dead. The trial, which was launched in November, was designed to account for civil strife in the area, by allowing the trial to stop and start if attacks near treatment centres impede operations, or the outbreak ends.

Sumathi Sivapalasingam, a senior director at Regeneron, said: “I’m in awe about what seemed to be an impossible clinical trial to run. The team did this in such a complex emergency and still, the data quality is exceptional.”

Louis Goss