WHO Launches Clinical Trial to Test First Treatments for Ebola Bundibugyo

Researchers have launched a clinical trial to evaluate potential treatments for the Bundibugyo virus of Ebola Virus Disease, through a clinical trial that enrolled its first patient in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday.

The Platform Adaptive Randomised Trial for New and Repurposed Filovirus Treatments (PARTNERS) will assess whether two antiviral therapies, a monoclonal antibody known as MBP134 and the antiviral drug remdesivir, can improve survival among patients diagnosed with BVD. Researchers will also investigate whether combining the two therapies offers greater benefits than using either treatment alone.

Sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the trial is being conducted through a collaboration between the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) in the DRC, the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium, and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

The study comes as the DRC continues to battle an outbreak of the Bundibugyo Strain of Ebola Virus Disease, which was officially declared in May. Since then, more than 1,400 people have been diagnosed with the disease, nearly 210 have recovered, and almost 440 have died. In Uganda, the Bundibugyo strain has infected 20 people, resulting in two deaths.

Although effective treatments have been developed for some forms of Ebola virus disease, there are currently no approved therapies specifically for the strain, and no treatment has yet demonstrated effectiveness across all Ebola virus species.

The WHO Technical Advisory Group selected MBP134 and remdesivir after reviewing available scientific evidence, including preclinical studies, safety data, and findings from previous Ebola outbreak responses. Remdesivir has previously been studied as a treatment for other Ebola virus species as well as COVID-19.

According to a WHO statement, all participants enrolled in the trial will be monitored for at least 28 days following enrollment.

“Even without approved therapeutics, people are recovering from this disease, but of course, we could save many more lives with safe and effective therapeutics in our toolkit,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “The PARTNERS trial, established with national authorities and scientific partners in record time, offers real hope that we can deliver concrete results for and with the communities at the heart of the outbreak.”

The PARTNERS study has been designed as a platform trial, allowing additional experimental treatments to be incorporated as they become available and are recommended by the WHO Technical Advisory Group.

Professor Amanda Rojek, PARTNERS Trial Operations Lead and Associate Professor of Health Emergencies at the Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford, said recent outbreaks have underscored the need to conduct research during public health emergencies rather than after they have ended.

She noted that the trial enables researchers to generate evidence on potential treatments while the outbreak is ongoing, allowing findings to inform patient care within months instead of years.

Like previous Ebola treatment studies, including one conducted in Uganda, the PARTNERS trial is designed to be rapidly deployed across multiple outbreaks to generate robust evidence on safe and effective therapies for both Ebola and Marburg virus diseases.

The randomised, controlled trial is enrolling patients of all ages with laboratory-confirmed Bundibugyo virus disease.