INTEGRATING CLINICAL RESEARCH
INTO EPIDEMIC RESPONSE
THE EBOLA EXPERIENCE
Gerald Keusch, Keith McAdam, Patricia A. Cuff,
Michelle Mancher, and Emily R. Busta, Editors
Committee on Clinical Trials During the 2014—2015 Ebola Outbreak
Board on Global Health
Board on Health Sciences Policy
Health and Medicine Division
A Report of
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
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This activity was supported by Contract No. HHSP233201400020B/HHSP23337042 with the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-45776-7
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Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. Integrating clinical research into epidemic response: The Ebola experience. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/24739.
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COMMITTEE ON CLINICAL TRIALS DURING THE 2014–2015 EBOLA OUTBREAK
GERALD T. KEUSCH (Co-Chair), Professor of Medicine and Global Health, Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health
KEITH McADAM (Co-Chair), Emeritus Professor of Clinical and Tropical Medicine, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
ABDEL BABIKER, Professor of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit at University College London
MOHAMED BAILOR BARRIE, Co-Founder, Chief Strategic Officer, The Wellbody Alliance
JANICE COOPER, Country Representative, Liberia Mental Health Initiative, The Carter Center
SHEILA DAVIS, Chief Nursing Officer, Partners In Health
KATHRYN EDWARDS, Professor of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt Research Program
SUSAN ELLENBERG, Professor of Biostatistics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
ROGER LEWIS, Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Harbor–University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center
ALEX JOHN LONDON, Professor of Philosophy; Director, Center for Ethics and Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
JENS LUNDGREN, Professor of Infectious Diseases, University of Copenhagen
MICHELLE M. MELLO, Professor of Law, Stanford University School of Medicine, School of Law
OLAYEMI OMOTADE, Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, Institute of Child Health, University College Hospital, University of Ibadan
DAVID H. PETERS, Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
FRED WABWIRE-MANGEN, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Makerere University School of Public Health
CHARLES D. WELLS, Head of Development and Associate Vice President, Infectious Diseases Unit, Sanofi-U.S.
Study Staff
PATRICIA A. CUFF, Study Co-Director
MICHELLE MANCHER, Study Co-Director
EMILY R. BUSTA, Associate Program Officer
MICHAEL J. BERRIOS, Senior Program Assistant
OLIVIA YOST, Research Assistant
ELLEN K. KIMMEL, Senior Research Librarian
ANNE B. CLAIBORNE, Senior Program Officer
JULIE PAVLIN, Director, Board on Global Health
ANDREW M. POPE, Director, Board on Health Sciences Policy
Consultants
JANET DARBYSHIRE, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology, University College London
ERIN HAMMERS FORSTAG, Science Writer
Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Dennis Carroll, U.S. Agency for International Development
Geneviève Chêne, Université de Bordeaux
I. Glenn Cohen, Harvard Law School
Patricia Fast, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative
Thomas R. Fleming, University of Washington
Peter Barton Hutt, Covington & Burling LLP
Mohammad Bailor Jalloh, FOCUS 1000
Elaine L. Larson, Columbia University
Heidi J. Larson, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Adam C. Levine, Brown University
Susan A. Murphy, University of Michigan
John-Arne Røttingen, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Janet Wittes, Statistics Collaborative, Inc.
Although the reviewers listed above provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the report’s conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Georges Benjamin, American Public Health Association, and Lawrence D. Brown, University of Pennsylvania. They were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of the report was carried out in accordance with the institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.
Preface
In the beginning there was one—a 2-year-old infant from a small village near the town of Guéckédou in the Forest Region of Guinea who, after a brief and dramatic illness, died on December 28, 2013. During January 2014, several immediate family members developed similar symptoms and died too, followed by some of the midwives, traditional healers, and health care workers who attended them. Soon the numbers affected in Guinea were in the tens, then the hundreds, and by the middle of the year in the thousands, now not only in Guinea but also in neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia. And so the Ebola outbreak of 2014–2015 began and spread, not unnoticed but rather unidentified, and grew to a magnitude never before seen since the virus had first been discovered in 1976. Ultimately the outbreak affected more than 28,600 individuals during 2014 and 2015, with at least 11,310 deaths recorded. This is far more than the total from every outbreak in the 40 years we have known of the Ebola virus.
Clearly the world was not prepared; while some aspects of the response worked, and the outbreak was ultimately brought to a close, many things did not work well at all. In part this was due to the nearly four decades of prior experience with Ebola outbreaks, which were all in relatively remote and isolated communities in central Africa, affecting a few to a few hundred individuals, albeit with a high case fatality rate, before coming to an end as effective public health measures to stop transmission were put into place. With this in mind as the typical pattern, many in the global public health community could not—or would not—believe that 2014 was really different. Health care and public health, like science itself, are built on the cumulative experience of the past, which serves as the basis for our expec-
tations and the foundation for new knowledge generation. In this instance, however, expectations gained from knowing the past prevented the experts, or at least most of them, from seeing that something different was really happening; these experts failed the vision test—to match what was known with what was happening and see both similarities and differences. That difference from previous outbreaks lay in the habitual movement of people across the porous borders where Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone abut one another, as the roads and available transportation made it easy for people to travel to the larger towns and the capital cities and on to nearby countries in the region—and, in a few instances, bringing the virus with them. That was all it took, and this ability transformed what had always been a short, limited outbreak in the past, to an epidemic spiraling out of control; this was especially true where the epidemic had originally begun, where it was rapidly becoming a major public health disaster, quickly outpacing the limited health and public health systems and overwhelming any surge capacity there was. Although the global humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) became involved early on, its capacity too was quickly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the outbreak. While MSF recognized what was happening, its calls for urgent international action were essentially disregarded, in part because of the reluctance of the affected countries to admit there was a crisis and, in turn, the reluctance of the World Health Organization (WHO) to believe this was really different, making WHO unable to focus more on global public health than on politics and take the necessary action only it could take.
The rest is now history: an outbreak of unprecedented magnitude in a setting of limited capacity, with political systems that were fragile after many years of civil war, plagued by violence, and the virus itself that killed health care workers, further decimating the indigenous capacity to care for patients and limit further dissemination of infection. It was a perfect storm. On top of this, there was a sluggish and contentious international emergency response, especially early on, often carried out with overworked, well-intentioned but relatively untrained international volunteer health workers. When the almost inevitable instances of infection occurred among them, they were repatriated to their countries of origin for state-of-the-art supportive clinical care, often raising the fear levels about the importation of Ebola among the general public in the United States and other developed countries. Some of these individuals received experimental drugs that were being slowly advanced through preclinical research in their countries, and when they survived it fanned the rumors circulating in the affected West African countries of a magic serum that cured the expatriates but that was not being made available to the local African population. This fed into conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus, and when there was the possibility of actually doing clinical research to establish safety and efficacy
of drugs and vaccines for Ebola, the conspiracy morphed into the view that now the West was using Africans as guinea pigs to study these experimental products. To make it worse, the various groups capable of mounting and overseeing these clinical trials could not agree on the right study design, the ethics of using controls and randomization, or whose patients would be offered the opportunity to be enrolled. With this background it is not surprising there was community backlash against the health care workers, the proposed studies, the health and political leadership in the countries, and the researchers, both local and international.
The challenge this committee has taken on is to step back and review the clinical research conducted during 2014–2015, specifically in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, to better understand what happened, the nature of the constraints that affected the design and implementation of human clinical trials, and what knowledge was actually gained on the safety and efficacy of the tested drugs and vaccines, most of which had never been given to a human before. All of this took place in the setting of an exploding humanitarian disaster where the provision of effective baseline clinical care was beyond the reach of many of the emergency treatment centers that were ultimately set up, at least in the early months of the outbreak, and where both caregivers and researchers would be constrained by the personal protective equipment they had to use and the limited time they could spend at the bedside, given the ambient conditions. And so in February 2016 we were asked by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to co-chair a committee that would make recommendations to the three U.S. sponsors, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to help them to do better the next time an outbreak like this occurs. The specific charge we took on is presented in Chapter 1, and the rest of the report presents our findings, conclusions, and recommendations to the study sponsors and, beyond them, to the greater global community. Our goal was not to cast blame but rather to find ways to improve what should be done the next time.
However, the statement of task was cognizant of the fact that conducting clinical trials requires “collaborative investment to achieve long-term ethical and scientific gains” and “planning activities during the inter-epidemic period.” To effectively launch trials in the context with which they were carried out during the Ebola outbreak, multiple issues of a scientific, political, cultural, social, ethical, and economic nature impacted the clinical research agenda and what it could produce; and there were both national and international implications that required consideration. We watched the efforts to build capacity in the three epicenter countries with support from the United States (and many other international donors and
scientific institutions) and then saw funds allocated to this effort by the U.S. Congress tapped to meet the new challenge of Zika virus, the outbreak du jour, before the local and global benefits of the investments in Ebola, those undertaken and those planned and still unfolding, could be reaped for the global community, not the least of which for the United States as well. While we do not provide specific recommendations regarding the sources of the necessary investments to build a better global system to address emerging infectious diseases in the future, we do address what we believe to be the critical issues to tackle and some of the actions necessary to do that. But we also know that funding will determine how far the world can improve on the status of things as they were in January 2014, when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa began, and how quickly that improvement might happen. It is clear that preparedness to respond to the next outbreak and preparedness to pursue clinical research on therapeutic products and vaccines during an outbreak are of the highest priority and that they will require sustained and flexible funding sources, free from political whim and pressure, to develop and reach the necessary functionality. We note here new efforts by the World Bank Group to engage with the WHO and its newfound partners, including the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Organization for Animal Health, and a number of United Nations agencies. And we welcome the growing engagement of these key players with foundations and charities to consult and collaborate more effectively on emerging infectious diseases, and to identify what needs to be done and how to find the resources from the global community to make that happen today and in the future.
The costs for the U.S. government and its many partners around the world to respond to the epidemic were enormous, as were the costs borne by the three affected countries. The economic effects of the epidemic outbreak will be felt for many years to come in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. It seems amazing that despite the 40-year head start that we had for Ebola we were not adequately prepared and that nearly 12,000 deaths later we still do not have licensed therapeutic agents or vaccines. Rather than expecting that the swarm of wealthy, powerful, and knowledgeable experts would rapidly develop and implement effective plans to control the epidemic, we learned that community engagement takes time and skill to reach common ground on what needs to be done, that communication science requires considerable investment, and that strengthening capacity in clinical care, public health, and health research systems is now an urgent and necessary requirement if this sort of epidemic is to be prevented and controlled in the future. The global costs of failure are devastating; the price of effective preparedness is certainly worth the investment. Many highly motivated individuals and institutions can turn this Ebola outbreak into a
global good, if they are charged with implementing the international learnings from the experience.
What we do not know is whether the needs, both in terms of capacity strengthening and the requisite financial support, can be met by an often fragmented global system of governance and engagement. We thank the brave people of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, who persevered through the ordeal and have emerged more committed than ever to the success of their countries, and all of those who attended the open meetings of the committee and gave us the benefit of their knowledge, experience, and passion to help in every way they could to improve the response to such a calamity in the future—and perhaps to be able to prevent such outbreaks. This is the intent of this report, to move the dial forward to reach such a day. As we look back at the work by a remarkable group of committee members, our consultant Janet Darbyshire, and our project staff at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine with whom we worked so closely over the past 10 months, we can identify one rather critical feature of a global community we know and believe in: from those who have much, much is expected.
Gerald T. Keusch and Keith McAdam, Co-Chairs
Committee on Clinical Trials During the 2014–2015 Ebola Outbreak
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Acknowledgments
This report reflects contributions from a number of individuals and groups. The committee takes this opportunity to recognize those who so generously gave their time and expertise to inform its deliberations. To begin the committee would like to thank the individuals who attended and presented at their open-session meetings (see Appendix A). The committee greatly benefited from the opportunity for discussion with these individuals and is thankful for their many contributions.
The committee could not have done its work without the support of the many clinical trial teams who surmounted innumerable challenges to successfully conduct clinical trials in the midst of an unprecedented outbreak, specifically Ebola ça Suffit (Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo, Initiative for Vaccine Research and World Health Organization; Mandy Kader Konde, University of Conakry, Guinea Ebola Research Commission, and Center of Research on Diseases), STRIVE (Anne Schuchat, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Barbara Mahon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Mohamed Samai, College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences and Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Freetown, Sierra Leone), EBOVAC–Salone (Johan Van Hoof, Janssen Pharmaceuticals R&D; Christopher McShane, Janssen Research & Development, LLC), PREVAIL (Richard T. Davey, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], National Institutes of Health [NIH]; John Beigel, Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc., in support of Clinical Research Section, Liberian Institute of Biomedical Research, NIAID, NIH; Mike Proschan, NIAID, NIH; Lori Dodd, NIAID, NIH; Jerome F. Pierson, NIAID, NIH; James Neaton, University of Minnesota; Stephen B. Kennedy, Incident Manage-
ment System, Liberia; Barthalomew Wilson, Partnership for Research on Ebola Virus in Liberia), JIKI (France Mentre, Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France; Denis Malvy, University Hospital of Bordeaux; Abdoul Habib Beavogui, National Center for Training and Research in Rural Health “Jean SENECAL” of Maferinyah, Republic of Guinea), RAPIDE–Ebola (Trudie Lang, University of Oxford; John Whitehead, Lancaster University; Peter Horby, University of Oxford and International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium), and Ebola-Tx (Johan van Griensven, Institute of Tropical Medicine–Antwerp).
The committee is grateful to the people of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone for hosting us and generously sharing their expertise, experiences, and personal stories. In particular, we would like to thank the representatives of the ministries of health Hon. Zulianatu Cooper (Sierra Leone), Hon. Alie Wurie (Sierra Leone), Hon. Yah Zolia (Liberia), and Hon. Tolbert Nyenswah (Liberia). Special thanks to Ambassador Juli Endee (Liberia Crusaders for Peace) and Chief Zanzan Kawa (Council of Chiefs of Liberia) for graciously welcoming us to Liberia and sharing with us the stories of their communities. We also thank Mosoka Fallah (Action Contre la Faim), Vuyu Kanda Golakai (University of Liberia), and Fatorma Bolay (Liberia Institute of Biomedical Research) for their assistance in arranging on-site visits and providing the committee the opportunity to experience Monrovia.
Many others provided support to this project in various ways. We thank Alexander M. Capron, University of Southern California, for his thoughtful review. We are grateful to Dana Vigue for her research assistance and to Elena Ovaitt Weiss for her creative efforts in our graphic design process, and finally, Robert Pool is to be recognized for his editorial assistance in preparing this report.
Contents
Assessment of Ebola Clinical Trials
Ethics of Clinical Research During an Epidemic
Being Prepared: Launching Clinical Trials in an Epidemic
Charge to the Committee and Study Scope
Context of the 2014–2015 Ebola Epidemic
2 CONDUCTING CLINICAL RESEARCH DURING AN EPIDEMIC
3 ASSESSMENT OF THERAPEUTIC TRIALS
4 ASSESSMENT OF VACCINE TRIALS
Overall Assessment of Vaccines
5 STRENGTHENING CAPACITY FOR RESPONSE AND RESEARCH
Capacity Challenges to Conducting Clinical Research
Integration of Research into Health Systems
6 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN RESEARCH AND RESPONSE
Engaging Communities in Response
Engaging Communities in Research
7 FACILITATING INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION AND COLLABORATION
Embedding Research into Response
Boxes, Figures, and Tables
BOXES
2-2 Statistical Guidelines for Early Termination of Clinical Trials
2-3 Moral Framework for Research
2-4 Inclusion of Pregnant Women and Children in Clinical Trials
2-5 Special Situations in Which Uncontrolled Phase 3 Trials May Be Warranted
2-6 The Standard of Care Owed to Research Participants
4-1 WHO Requirements of Vaccine Trials
5-1 Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED)
6-1 Purposes of Community Engagement During an Epidemic
7-1 Global Health Security Agenda
FIGURES
S-1 A timeline of critical components: Launching clinical trials in an epidemic
1-1 Weekly reported Ebola cases during the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak
3-1 Clinical trial enrollment dates during the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak—therapeutic trials
4-1 Clinical trial enrollment start dates during the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak—vaccine trials
5-1 Timeline to implement a clinical trial
6-1 Organizational structure of the Liberian–U.S. research partnership
7-1 A timeline of critical components: Launching clinical trials in an epidemic
TABLES
S-2 Investigational Ebola Vaccines in Formal Clinical Trials During the 2014–2015 Ebola Outbreak
3-1 Timeline of Therapeutic Trials
3-3 Summary of Therapeutic Trials Conducted During 2014–2015 Ebola Outbreak
4-1 October 2015 WHO Summary of the Phase 1 Ebola Vaccine Trials
4-5 Preliminary Antibody Responses Following Vaccination—PREVAIL I Trial
4-6 Summary of Ebola Vaccine Trials
5-1 Challenges and Solutions of Implementing Sierra Leone Trial to Introduce a Vaccine Against Ebola
6-1 Determining Research Benefits for Study Participants and/or Communities Involved in Research
B-1 Brief Summary of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Various Clinical Trial Designs
C-1 Basic Ethical Principles That Should Govern Research with Human Subjects
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Acronyms and Abbreviations
Ad26 |
recombinant adenovirus serotype 26 |
AIDS |
acquired immune deficiency syndrome |
ASPR |
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response |
AZT |
azidothymidine, also known as Zidovudine (ZDV) |
BBC |
British Broadcasting Corporation |
CCC |
community care center |
CDC |
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention |
CEPI |
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations |
ChAd3 |
recombinant chimpanzee adenovirus type 3 vector vaccine |
CIOMS |
Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences |
CMV |
cytomegalovirus |
COE |
Council of Europe |
COHRED |
Council on Health Research for Development |
CP |
convalescent plasma |
Ct |
cycle threshold (PCR) |
DNA |
deoxyribonucleic acid |
DSMB |
data and safety monitoring board |
EBOVAC |
Ebola vaccine projects |
EC50 |
half maxima effective concentration |
ECOWAS |
Economic Community of West African States |
ELISA |
enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay |
ENHR |
essential national health research |
ETU |
Ebola treatment unit |
EVD |
Ebola virus disease |
FDA |
U.S. Food and Drug Administration |
GCP |
good clinical practice |
GDP |
gross domestic product |
GHSA |
Global Health Security Agenda |
GP |
glycoprotein |
GSK |
GlaxoSmithKline |
H1N1 |
influenza A virus subtype H1N1 |
HCW |
health care worker |
HHS |
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services |
HIV |
human immunodeficiency virus |
IC50 |
half maximal inhibitory concentration |
ICS |
international coalition of stakeholders |
IDA |
International Development Association component of the World Bank Group |
IDSR |
integrated disease surveillance and response |
IgG |
immunoglobulin-G |
IHR |
International Health Regulations |
IMC |
International Medical Corps |
Inserm |
Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) |
IOM |
Institute of Medicine |
IV |
intravenous |
JIKI |
means “Hope” in “Kissi” language |
LIBR |
Liberian Institute of Biomedical Research |
MERS-CoV |
Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus |
MOU |
memorandum of understanding |
MSF |
Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) |
MVA |
modified vaccinia virus |
NGO |
nongovernmental organization |
NHP |
nonhuman primate |
NIAID |
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH |
NIH |
U.S. National Institutes of Health |
oSOC |
optimized standard of care |
PCR |
polymerase chain reaction |
PEF |
Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility |
PHEIC |
public health emergencies of international concern |
PK |
pharmacokinetics |
PO |
per os (oral administration) |
PPE |
personal protective equipment |
PREVAIL |
Partnership for Research on Ebola Virus in Liberia, NIH |
R3W |
rapid research response workgroup |
R&D |
research and development |
RAPIDE |
Rapid Assessment of Potential Interventions & Drugs for Ebola |
RCT |
randomized controlled trial |
REDISSE |
Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement Program |
RHInnO |
Rapid Health Innovation |
RNA |
ribonucleic acid |
rVSV |
recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus |
SAE |
serious adverse event |
SARS |
severe acute respiratory syndrome |
SBCC |
social and behavior change communication |
SOC |
standard of care |
STAC-EE |
Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee on Ebola Experimental Interventions |
STRIVE |
Sierra Leone Trial to Introduce a Vaccine against Ebola, CDC |
TB |
tuberculosis |
UN |
United Nations |
UNESCO |
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |
USAID |
U.S. Agency for International Development |
WAHO |
West African Health Organization |
WHO |
World Health Organization |
WMA |
World Medical Association |
ZEBOV |
Zaire Ebola virus |