Low Infection Rate Halts Ebola Treatment Trials In Liberia

Britain's Wellcome Trust said that clinical trials it was funding for
a new Ebola treatment in Liberia were halted on Tuesday due to a fall
in new cases.

"The current position is that there is no realistic prospect of the
trial enrolling sufficient patients to be able to reach a conclusion
about the efficacy of the drug," the Wellcome Trust, Britain's biggest
scientific research charity, said in a statement.

"Therefore the trial has been terminated," it added.

The Wellcome Trust said the decision was taken on Tuesday after the
pharmaceutical company Chimerix, which manufactures the brincidofovir
treatment, said it was withdrawing from the trial on Friday.

The first large-scale trials of two Ebola vaccines --
GlaxoSmithKline's Chad3-EBO-Z and rVSV-ZEBOV, manufactured by Merck
and Newlink -- began in Liberia on Monday.

Tuesday's decision was taken by the Trial Steering Committee, which
includes scientists from Liberia, the University of Oxford and
Medecins Sans Frontieres.

"We're delighted that infections are falling, but fewer patients makes
it more difficult to carry out the robust scientific studies needed,"
Peter Horby from the University of Oxford, who was leading the trial,
said in a statement.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, which is funding a
multi-million pound therapeutics platform for experimental Ebola
treatments, said it was "disappointing" that the trial could not
continue.

"It is essential that other studies of potential treatments and
vaccines continue and hopefully will still be able to deliver
meaningful results for this and the inevitable future epidemics of
Ebola," he said.

Stephen Kennedy, a study investigator from the Pacific Institute for
Research and Evaluation in Liberia added: "The scientific community
will move on without any clear evidence regarding the role of
brincidofovir in the management of Ebola."

Weekly Ebola infections in west Africa have dropped to below 100 for
the first time in more than six months, the WHO said last week,
raising hopes the worst-ever outbreak of the virus is coming to an
end.

The World Health Organisation said it had now shifted its efforts in
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- the countries worst-hit by the
epidemic -- from slowing the spread to stamping it out completely.
--TimesLive