Ebola outbreak opens way to chaotic jockeying to test experimental drugs
MAY 30, 2018
It’s really hard to develop treatments for Ebola
That’s because, thankfully, outbreaks are rare. But because you can only test whether an Ebola treatment actually works during an outbreak, the current one has led to a chaotic and politically charged process of determining which in-development therapies actually get shipped to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, STAT’s Helen Branswell reports.
A vaccine from Merck is already being deployed, and another from Johnson & Johnson is available. Then there are therapies from Gilead Sciences, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Mapp Biopharmaceuticals. The final decision falls to the DRC government, and public health officials caution that the country’s lack of medical infrastructure could make a proper clinical trial tough to envision.
“Everyone’s really excited about the use of these drugs, but are they useful in a rural African setting with very little infrastructure? The jury’s out,” said Dr. Peter Salama, the WHO’s emergency response chief.
A vaccine from Merck is already being deployed, and another from Johnson & Johnson is available. Then there are therapies from Gilead Sciences, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Mapp Biopharmaceuticals. The final decision falls to the DRC government, and public health officials caution that the country’s lack of medical infrastructure could make a proper clinical trial tough to envision.
“Everyone’s really excited about the use of these drugs, but are they useful in a rural African setting with very little infrastructure? The jury’s out,” said Dr. Peter Salama, the WHO’s emergency response chief.
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