In a country that does not know peace for various reasons, scientists and doctors in Congo have made a page in history by conducting a clinical test on a drug for the treatment of Ebola.
Three days ago, a joint statement from the WHO and the National Institute of Health made it clear that two of the treatments that have been tested reduce the mortality rate of the disease.
A vaccine recently showed good ability to prevent Ebola contagion, but until yesterday there were few possibilities for those who had already fallen ill. “From today Ebola is no longer incurable,” says Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the biomedical research institute in Congo, who led the tests.
The trials, which began in November, with patients enrolled at four different clinical centers, involved randomly administering four different experimental treatments. In one case it was an antiviral drug called remdesivir, in the other three as many drugs obtained from monoclonal antibodies.
The drug called Zmapp, which was considered the standard in the care to Ebola, gave patients a 51% survival rate. Like tossing a coin. The drug developed by a company called Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and made from a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies brings the survival rate to 94%.
A winning team
Drugs based on monoclonal antibodies have a recent history of great successes on the most diverse diseases, from lupus to some forms of cancer. It takes time, sometimes a few years to get them, but it's worth it. Zmapp, for example, was developed by infecting mice with Ebola and then reverse-engineering the antibodies produced by the mice. The antibodies were then made more similar to human ones so as not to cause reactions. Ebola attacks the cells of its victims using proteins that function like "nails" on the armor of its virus. Targeting these proteins means blocking the spread of the virus. Ebola's ability to change shape has led to an approach based on a "cocktail" of antibodies, so as to target as many mutations as possible.
The next step
Success does not stop efforts to completely eradicate Ebola from the planet. The next target is a drug obtained from monoclonal antibodies of infected humans. The tests will be on mAb114, this is the code name of the next drug produced by an American company, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.
“The success is evident,” Ryan says. “but it brings with it a tragedy: and the tragedy is that we are not treating enough people: too many people are far from treatment centres, or are found too late”.
A carnage
Since the last outbreak of the epidemic in the province Kivu, the second most violent ever recorded, has been exactly one year: since then more than 2800 people have fallen ill, with 1800 deaths already confirmed. A month ago the WHO declared an international emergency given the spread of the contagion with a case emerging in Goma, Rwanda.
