http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
Chimerix’s Brincidofovir Given To Dallas, Nebraska Ebola Patients
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As Thomas Eric Duncan was “fighting for his life” over the weekend from an Ebola infection he contracted in Liberia, he was given an antiviral drug on Saturday that is best known for saving a little boy with cancer earlier this year.
We learned today that, Ashoka Mukpo, the freelance cameraman who contracted Ebola while on assignment with Dr. Nancy Snyderman at NBC News, will be treated with the same drug.
When it comes to Ebola drugs, we’ve heard primarily about ZMapp, Tekmira, and vaccines. How and why did this drug, brincidofovir, seem to suddenly emerge on the Ebola treatment scene?
On the hotseat over compassionate use
Brincidofovir, or CMX001, is a broad-spectrum antiviral drug in development by Chimerix, a 75-employee company on the outskirts of Research Triangle Park in Durham, North Carolina. The drug is currently in Phase 3 trials for life-threatening adenovirus in children and adults who have compromised immune systems and for adults with cytomegalovirus infections acquired after hematopoietic stem cells transplants for cancer.
Brincidofovir was also the antiviral drug at the center of a highly-charged, compassionate use case earlier this year of a then-seven-year-old Virginia boy, Josh Hardy. The boy acquired an adenovirus infection after a bone marrow transplant at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis for a cancer he’d been battling since an infant.
Chimerix had previously been offering brincidofovir under compassionate use provisions – called extended access outside of a clinical trial – but discontinued the program to focus energy on getting the drug to market, an understandable consequence of the limited finances of a small company with no other products on the market.
Thanks. Hopefully this company will not be the second ebola fatality.... I hope they get the chance to get their drug to market.