Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing (efavirenz CJD phase 3 sponsor)

Key facts

• The hospital was founded in 1958 and describes itself as a tertiary hospital specialising in neuroscience and gerontology; its Department of Neurology dates to 1959.
• It is the First Clinical Medical College of Capital Medical University and has a main campus in Xicheng District, Beijing.
• The official profile lists the National Center for Neurological Disorders, the China International Neuroscience Institute and the National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Diseases among its centres.
• Xuanwu Hospital is the lead sponsor and responsible party of ClinicalTrials.gov NCT07482085, efavirenz for CJD; no collaborators are listed, Liyong Wu MD is the listed principal investigator and Zhongyun Chen MD the central contact.
• The trial record shows one recruiting site (Xuanwu) although its summary mentions 21 centres nationwide; it started on 14 April 2026, expects 246 participants and estimates completion in December 2028.
• The 2024 JAMA Neurology paper by Chen and colleagues tested skin from several body sites by RT-QuIC in 101 prion disease and 23 non-prion patients at Xuanwu; pooling all sites at three dilutions gave 95 percent positivity against 75.5 percent for CSF, but in the confirmatory cohort a single skin site was comparable to CSF with no significant difference (P = .45).
• In the confirmatory multicentre cohort of 43 patients, one skin site was positive in 79.1 percent versus 72.1 percent for CSF, a difference that was not statistically significant.
• Co-authors came from Xuanwu's neurology and laboratory departments, its geriatric research centre, China CDC's National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, and Nanchang University's First Affiliated Hospital.
• Beijing had the most hospital referrals to China's national CJD surveillance in 2006 to 2019, which covered 1,970 referred cases from 344 hospitals; about 12 percent of hospitals supplied roughly 70 percent of cases.
• A 2025 China CDC analysis of 300 Chinese probable sCJD patients found shorter survival with onset after 65, motor signs at presentation, caudate or putamen MRI signal and no nasal feeding.
• A 2020 paper from another hospital said RT-QuIC was not yet widely available in Chinese hospitals and that only 4 of 1,302 sCJD cases in 2006 to 2017 were definite.

Timeline

1. 1958Hospital founded as Beijing Xuanwu District Hospital.
2. 1959Department of Neurology established.
3. 2016National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Diseases established at the hospital.
4. 2023China CDC Weekly paper on geographic variation in prion disease referrals under national surveillance, with Beijing leading.
5. 2024JAMA Neurology paper on multisite skin RT-QuIC versus CSF, exploratory cohort at Xuanwu.
6. 2025China CDC Weekly survival-factor study of 300 Chinese probable sCJD patients.
7. 2026Efavirenz CJD trial registered (submitted 6 March, posted 19 March).
8. 2026Trial start recorded as 14 April 2026.
9. 2026Registry record last updated (posted 3 September 2026).