Gilead Sciences announced topline results from the Phase 3 SIMPLE trial in hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19 pneumonia. This open-label study evaluated 5-day and 10-day courses of the investigational antiviral remdesivir plus standard of care, versus standard of care alone.
The study demonstrated that patients in the 5-day remdesivir treatment group were 65 percent more likely to have clinical improvement at Day 11 compared with those in the standard of care group (OR 1.65 [95% CI 1.09-2.48]; p=0.017). The odds of improvement in clinical status with the 10-day treatment course of remdesivir versus standard of care were also favorable, trending toward but not reaching statistical significance (OR 1.31 [95% CI 0.88-1.95]; p=0.18).
“We now have three randomized, controlled clinical trials demonstrating that remdesivir improved clinical outcomes by several different measures. Today’s results showed that when treating moderate disease, a 5-day course of remdesivir led to greater clinical improvement than standard of care, adding further evidence of remdesivir’s benefit to previously released study results. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ placebo-controlled study showed that remdesivir enabled more rapid recovery and that earlier treatment improved clinical outcomes. Our SIMPLE-Severe study showed that when treating patients with severe disease, 5 days of remdesivir led to similar clinical improvements as a 10-day course,” said Merdad Parsey, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, Gilead Sciences. “The additional data we have in hand today will further guide our research efforts, including evaluating treatment earlier in the course of disease, combination studies with other therapies for the most critically ill patients, pediatric studies and the development of alternate formulations.”
Remdesivir was generally well-tolerated in both the 5-day and 10-day treatment groups. The most common adverse events occurring in more than 5 percent of patients in both treatment groups were nausea (5-day: 10% / 10-day: 9% / SOC: 3%), diarrhea (5-day: 5% / 10-day: 5% / SOC: 7%) and headache (5-day: 5% / 10-day: 5% / SOC: 3%).