WHO-led trial to test two Ebola drugs in Congo outbreak
A consortium including the World Health Organization, the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, the medical charity ALIMA, and the University of Oxford is beginning a clinical trial of two treatments against the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola now circulating in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The trial will test Gilead Sciences’ antiviral remdesivir and MappBio’s monoclonal antibody MBP-134 — both individually and in combination.
The outbreak is already the third-largest on record, with close to 1,100 confirmed cases and more than 275 deaths in the DRC plus 20 cases in neighboring Uganda. A practical wrinkle shapes the study design: the Bundibugyo strain appears to be less lethal than other Ebola variants, so detecting a treatment benefit requires a larger enrollment — around 1,000 participants, per the WHO. Existing Ebola therapies were validated against the more common Zaire strain, leaving a gap this trial is meant to fill while the epidemic is still expanding in a region hampered by conflict.