Pursuits
Ebola Drug Trials to Start Without Placebos in Africa
This article is for subscribers only.
The first human trials of experimental Ebola treatments will start next month in West Africa, as researchers seek to fast-track drugs to fight a disease that has killed more than 5,000 people and is threatening to spread in a fourth nation.
A trial of Fujifilm Holdings Corp.’s antiviral favipiravir involving about 200 patients will begin at a Doctors Without Borders treatment center in Guinea, and Chimerix Inc.’s drug brincidofovir will be tested in as many as 140 adults at a site yet to be determined, the medical charity said today. A third trial using antibody-rich blood from survivors to treat about 100 patients will start at the Donka Ebola Center in Conakry, Guinea.