New cases of Ebola in West Africa have been dropping steadily since the peak of the crisis last fall, but details about human trials of the drugs designed to fight the crisis are still rolling in. Last week (June 19), Tekmira Pharmaceutical Corp. in Burnbay Canada and the Wellcome Trust announced that they were halting a phase 2 trial for the RNA interference-based drug TKM-Ebola-Guinea. In their statement, Tekmira said that the study had reached a “predefined statistical endpoint and enrollment has been closed.”
The decision to stop recruiting patients for the trial comes after discouraging preliminary results that suggest the drug, which was designed to disrupt viral replication, is “unlikely to demonstrate an overall therapeutic benefit to patients,” according to the Wellcome Trust. The ...
