The COVID-19 pandemic created an unexpected boost for Roche when health facilities in China started snapping up its IL-6 inhibitor Actemra to treat dangerous complications in COVID-19 patients. Sales of the drug soared 30% in the first quarter of this year as the pandemic spread across the world.
Now, Roche is looking to boost Actemra’s profile in COVID-19 by launching a trial of the drug in combination with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral remdesivir, which was approved for emergency use May 1. Roche said Thursday it is collaborating with Gilead on a phase 3, 450-patient trial comparing remdesivir alone to a remdesivir-Actemra regimen in patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia.
Actemra was originally approved by the FDA in 2010 to treat rheumatoid arthritis, but its potential in tamping down dangerous immune reactions came to the fore during the development of the two FDA-approved CAR-T treatments for cancer, Novartis’ Kymriah and Gilead’s Yescarta. In 2017, the FDA approved Actemra to treat cytokine release syndrome—a potentially deadly immune reaction—in cancer patients receiving CAR-T cells.
The Actemra-remdesivir combo trial is the latest in a string of COVID-19 initiatives Roche is pursuing. The company is also part of an accelerated vaccine-development program run by the National Institutes of Health.
As for Gilead, it rolled out much-anticipated data on remdesivir’s effectiveness in COVID-19 late last week. In hospitalized patients who required oxygen, the drug cut recovery time by 47% over placebo, the data showed. The overall probability that patients taking remdesivir would improve clinically was 50% higher than it was among those on placebo.
SOURCE:FIERCEPHARMA.COM