Vi­iV Health­care and ma­jor­i­ty own­er Glax­o­SmithK­line have cleared an­oth­er im­por­tant hur­dle on a long-run­ning quest to chal­lenge Gilead’s dom­i­nance in pre­ven­ta­tive HIV treat­ments.

The fi­nal analy­sis of a new study shows the GSK sub­sidiary’s long-last­ing in­jec­tion, cabote­gravir, proved 66% more ef­fec­tive in HIV pre­ven­tion than Gilead’s break­through Tru­va­da pill. And they now in­tend to carve away some of the block­buster rev­enue that Gilead has en­joyed for years.

The study, re­leased Tues­day, com­pared the ef­fects of pa­tients tak­ing cabote­gravir ver­sus those tak­ing dai­ly oral pills. With­in the in­jec­tion arm of the test, re­searchers doc­u­ment­ed on­ly 13 cas­es of HIV, or an in­ci­dence rate of 0.41%. In the pill arm, 39 cas­es were found, amount­ing to a rate of 1.22%. The study al­so not­ed high lev­els of ad­her­ence to dai­ly oral ther­a­py.

Due to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, the blind­ed phase of the study was halt­ed in May. Af­ter a fi­nal analy­sis and re­view, Vi­iV was able to con­firm the in­jec­tions proved more ef­fec­tive than dai­ly pills at the high­light­ed 66 per­cent rate.

Kim­ber­ly Smith

“This ad­vance­ment has the po­ten­tial to be a game-chang­er for HIV pre­ven­tion, of­fer­ing … the con­ve­nience of re­duced dos­ing from dai­ly to just six times per year,” Kim­ber­ly Smith, R&D chief at Vi­iV, told Reuters.

The re­sults of the study come as gener­ic ver­sions of Tru­va­da, a once-dai­ly pill that re­duces the risk of con­tract­ing HIV through sex by about 99 per­cent, are about to hit the mar­ket. Tru­va­da and De­scovy, an­oth­er Gilead HIV treat­ment, have al­lowed the com­pa­ny to es­sen­tial­ly own the en­tire drug sec­tor ever since Tru­va­da was green-lit by the FDA in 2012 as the first pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure for HIV.

How­ev­er, Gilead is fac­ing a law­suit from ac­tivists claim­ing the com­pa­ny ex­tend­ed its mo­nop­oly by il­le­gal­ly al­ter­ing de­vel­op­ment times, and a law­suit from the US gov­ern­ment al­leg­ing im­prop­er patent prac­tices. Gilead has al­so faced heavy crit­i­cism of price goug­ing, as Tru­va­da treat­ment can cost around $20,000 per year.

Tru­va­da net­ted Gilead $2.8 bil­lion in sales last year in both HIV pre­ven­tion and treat­ment.

Though Tru­va­da and De­scovy are al­ready high­ly ef­fec­tive treat­ments, GSK hopes it can sell the idea of in­creased com­pli­ance with its new drug. Be­cause cabote­gravir on­ly re­quires one in­jec­tion every two months, pa­tients are less like­ly to for­get to take it, as op­posed to the risk of miss­ing a dai­ly Tru­va­da pill.

Cabote­gravir has had its own share of road bumps as well. Back in De­cem­ber, the FDA is­sued a com­plete re­sponse let­ter to Vi­iV and re­ject­ed its ap­pli­ca­tion for month­ly cabote­gravir in­jec­tions, cit­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­trol con­cerns. As a re­sult, the NDA for the bi­month­ly reg­i­men was pushed back from the first quar­ter of 2020.

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

Roche and Genentech have committed $53 million to back a 10-year quest aimed at going back to the drawing board to use new technology and fresh scientific insights to generate a pipeline of drugs for neurological diseases.

Researchers from both Roche and its big South San Francisco hub — mixing teams from gRED and pRED this time — will mix it up with the scientists drawn together for the Weill Neurohub — formed in 2019 as a joint research partnership involving UCSF, Berkeley and the University of Washington — in an exploration of the field to develop new therapies for some of the toughest diseases in drug R&D: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, ALS and autism.

On the hunt for a novel competitor to Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent in severe asthma, Amgen and AstraZeneca posted “exciting” results from their next-gen antibody late last year. Now, the partners are showing their hands, and the results look good enough for approval.

Amgen and AstraZeneca’s tezepelumab plus standard of care cut the rate of severe asthma attacks by 56% at the one-year mark compared with SOC alone, according to full data from the Phase III NAVIGATOR study presented Friday at the virtual American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology meeting. And those significant results were consistent regardless of patients’ baseline eosinophil counts.