Antiviral therapeutics for the treatment of Ebola virus infection

•Prior to the West Africa outbreak, there was no Ebola therapeutic in clinical trials.•Six products were evaluated during efficacy trials in West Africa.•None of the trials were able to statistically demonstrate efficacy.

There have been significant developments in Ebola virus therapeutics. While the efficacy of several products was evaluated in the recent West Africa outbreak, a licensed treatment for EBOV disease remains elusive. Factors that negatively impacted the execution of clinical trials included an overall lack of world readiness to conduct clinical trials in an outbreak setting, ethical concerns limiting implementation of the randomized controlled trials in an outbreak setting, and a decline in case numbers by the time resources were mobilized to conduct clinical trials. We summarize relevant therapeutics that underwent clinical trials during the West Africa outbreak and highlight promising candidates under advanced development.