Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Met with team from Gilead Sciences who presented data on their new compound GS 5734 that has impressive preclinicakl activity against Ebola. They want our help in testing it in West Africa. It is an RNA Polymerase with activity against MERS, and likely RSV, Chik, and others. We will help them and do a trial in West Africa after we finish the ZMapp trial that is moving along well (47 subjects thus far) in Sierra Leone and soon in Guinea. Infections persist in both countries. Also, last week there was an infection in Liberia with 2 secondary cases. The Gilead people were: Andrew Chang (Head of HIV Therapeutics & Development Operations; William Lee (Head of research); Howard Jaffe (Senior Advisor); and Tomas Cihlar (Head of Discovery Virology). Also, Cliff is back from Guinea and it looks like (despite the continued objections of tom Frieden), we will expand the RCT Vaccine trial into Guinea where there are persistent cases. Had diner tonight at Grapeseed restaurant in Bethesda with the BMGF people who are in town for our yearly joint gates/NIH meeting. Francis Collins and I and Doug owy were the senior NIH people there and Trevor Mundel, Emilio Emini, Chris Carp, Chris Wilson were senior Gates people among others.