The latest Ebola outbreak in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in central Africa, as of 6 May had sickened 1506 people, 1045 of whom have died. Previously, only the Ebola outbreak that exploded in West Africa in 2014 had more cases and deaths. The outbreak has spiked over the past month, with more than 400 new cases in April alone—a doubling from March.
“The number of new cases continues to rise, in part due to repeated incidents of violence affecting the ability of response teams to immediately identify and create vaccination rings around all people at risk of contracting Ebola,” WHO said in a statement.
WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) therefore recommended “expanding the population eligible for vaccination” with the already deployed rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, the statement said.
That vaccine, developed by Merck, remains unlicenced but has been widely shown to be safe and effective. Ebola virus belongs to the class of Filoviridae Group V negative sense ssRNA viruses and like all RNA viruses it has a very high mutation rate compared to DNA viruses. This is why it is difficult to make effective vaccines to prevent diseases caused by RNA viruses.
Considering the current Ebola outbreak and the scale of 2014 Ebola epidemic, the high costs involved in the containment and management of the outbreak and the difficulties involved in vaccine development, the development of an effective haemorrhagic fever antivirus has become a priority on the global political agenda.
No approved, effective, antiviral treatment is currently available and as such the Ebola case fatality rate is very high. A handful of experimental drugs are available, and some seem to be able to offer treatment benefit, however none of the current options has, thus far, been very successful in clinical trials.
First Health United’s sponsor, the Amsterdam-based First Health Pharmaceuticals, has been developing compounds like RNA Translation Inhibitor compounds that were tested in vitro against the Ebola virus and proved effective at clinically relevant micro molar concentrations. DDX3 inhibition has a mitigating effect on the immune response which is one of the key triggering factors causing Cytokine Storm, suggesting a potential benefit in the treatment of haemorrhagic fever
Further testing and development are currently taking place in collaboration with the United States Army Medical Research Institute for infectious diseases (USAMRIID), which owns qualified facilities for researching Biohazard Level 4 viruses.
Sources: WHO, The Science Mag, First Health Pharmaceuticals
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The latest Ebola outbreak in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in central Africa, as of 6 May had sickened 1506 people, 1045 of whom have died. Previously, only the Ebola outbreak that exploded in West Africa in 2014 had more cases and deaths.
