Glaxo hails major HIV breakthrough
Drugs giant claims jabs better than daily pill...
GLAXOSMITHKLINE hailed a major breakthrough after its revolutionary injection to prevent HIV thrashed the standard treatment in a clinical trial.
The company said an injection of its cabotegravir drug every other month had been 69pc more effective than rival Gilead’s daily Truvada pill at preventing men from catching HIV.
The tests were so successful that researchers stopped the study three years early.
The ‘game-changing’ injections mean GSK could be poised to retake the lead in the £20bn global HIV drugs market. Glaxo previously dominated the sector but has since fallen behind Gilead.
The apparent success of the drug will be a big boost to chief executive Emma Walmsley, who has made HIV one of her top research priorities alongside respiratory, oncology and immune-inflammation medicines.
The drug was developed at ViiV Healthcare, which is majority-owned by GSK. Kimberly Smith, ViiV’s head of research, said a long-acting injection was a better treatment because users have been shown to struggle with a routine of daily pills.
Some also say this adds to the stigma around the virus.
Smith said: ‘If approved, this longacting injectable has the potential to be a game-changer for HIV prevention by reducing the frequency of dosing from 365 days to six times per year.’
She added: ‘Individuals have to show up every eight weeks in the clinic for the injection but in-between there is not a need to take a pill daily, so you really change the equation for adherence with a long-acting drug.’
Researchers opened the study of 4,600 men, who have sex with men and transgender women, in late 2016 in countries including the US, Brazil, South Africa and Thailand.
The randomised trial found that 50 men caught HIV during the period covered by the study – 12 of whom had been receiving GSK’s treatment and the other 38 of whom were taking daily pills. Preventive therapies are seen as the key to controlling the spread of the disease, which can develop into AIDS, among at-risk populations. The trial, which has not been peerreviewed, has a sister study examining the effects of the injection treatment on women. And GSK has a pipeline of other treatments that include combination pills for people living with HIV, which affects 38m worldwide. The virus was first identified in the 1980s and is thought to have crossed over into humans decades before when hunters ate an infected chimpanzee or got its blood into an open wound. Jared Baeten, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, said the results were ‘really exciting’. Cambridge-based GSK is collaborating with firms and research groups across the world to work on promising potential coronavirus vaccines. It is working with Sanofi on a vaccine that is expected to enter clinical trials later this year. GSK shares rose 2.4pc, or 39.4p, to 1687.2p last night.