A coalition of companies and aid groups will test experimental drugs and collect blood plasma from Ebola survivors to treat new victims of the disease in West Africa.
Plasma from survivorscontains antibodies, substances the immune system makes to fight the virus.
Several Ebola patients have received survivor plasma and recovered, but doctors say there is no way to know whether it really helps without a study like the one they are about to start within a month.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving €4.5 million to increase production of the treatments for the project in Guinea and other Ebola-affected countries in Africa.
More than a dozen companies, universities and others are contributing supplies, staff and cash, and are working with the countries and the World Health Organisation on specific procedures and locations.
Besides helping Ebola patients now, plasma “could be a tool for a future epidemic as well” from different viruses, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said.
“You might not have drugs and vaccines for some new thing” and it would be good to have capabilities in place to collect and give plasma to fill the gap until those other tools can be developed, he said.
There are no drugs or vaccines approved now for Ebola, which has killed more than 5,000 people this year in West Africa, most of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Doctors Without Borders also said last week it would host studies of experimental treatments and plasma at three of its West Africa treatment centres.
The drugs to be tested by both groups include brincidofovir, an antiviral medicine that has been tried in a few Ebola cases so far. Its maker, North Carolina-based Chimerix developed it to treat other types of viruses and lab tests suggest it might help fight Ebola.
“We said to them, ‘Well, if money was no constraint, how much could you make?’ and they gave us a number,” Gates said.
“So we said, ‘OK, we’ll take the risk that maybe nobody will ever buy this from you. So we’ll help you scale up the manufacturing’.”
Making plasma available is a complex task. Plasma is the clear part of blood and the part that contains antibodies. In Africa, donors’ blood will be filtered through a machine to remove small amounts of plasma and return the rest of the blood to the donor − a process that allows someone to donate as often as every two weeks.
Donors’ blood will be filtered through a machine to remove small amounts of plasma and return the rest of the blood to the donor
One of the first patients successfully treated for Ebola in the US, aid worker Kent Brantly, received plasma from a 14-year-old boy he treated in Africa, where he was infected. Brantly has donated plasma several times to Ebola patients in the US.
A plasma recipient must have a compatible blood type with the donor. Survivors who give plasma also must be tested to make sure they are cured of Ebola and do not have other diseases such as hepatitis, syphilis or HIV.
The Africa study will take an added step − use of an experimental system by Cerus for inactivating viruses in blood.
Ada Igonoh, a doctor in Nigeria who caught Ebola from a patient and recovered, expects to donate plasma and recruit others for the study.
“Survivors will be willing if they understand the goal,” she said.
She and Brantly met Gates to discuss the project earlier this month at an American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene conference in New Orleans.
Luciana Borio, who is leading the Food and Drug Administration’s Ebola response, spoke at the conference about plasma. Even though it seemed to help in some cases, “the bottom line is that we don’t really know if it helps and to what degree it might help”, she said. “We would love to not be in the same situation in the future.
A study was the only way to know for sure, she said.
Clinical Research Management, an Ohio company that contracts with sponsors to run clinical trials, will lead the plasma study in Africa.
Plasma will be collected through three bloodmobiles donated by another Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, and the Greenbaum Foundation. The bloodmobiles have been flown to Africa.
The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases will provide Ebola testing for the study.
Several universities will help, as will the Blood Centres of America and the Safe Blood for Africa Foundation. About a dozen companies donated equipment and supplies.
Meanwhile, a member of Cuba’s 165-member medical team sent to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone is being treated by British doctors after he was diagnosed with the disease, it has emerged.
State media said Felix Baez Sarria would be transferred to a special unit in Geneva at the recommendation of the World Health Organisation.
Cuba won world praise for sending at least 256 medical workers to Sierra Leone, Libera and Guinea to help treat Ebola patients.
Baez, an internal medicine specialist, came down with a fever of more than 100 degrees on Sunday and was diagnosed with Ebola the following day.