Eliav Barr, Merck Research Laboratories CMO

In wake of safe­ty scare, Mer­ck scraps month­ly PrEP plans for lead HIV drug — while march­ing ahead with re­vised clin­i­cal plans

Mer­ck is throw­ing in the tow­el on its lead can­di­date for a long-act­ing pre-ex­po­sure pro­phy­lax­is (PrEP) for HIV af­ter months of grap­pling with safe­ty con­cerns.

The phar­ma gi­ant — which first flagged a drop in im­mune cell counts in a tri­al last No­vem­ber and sub­se­quent­ly halt­ed mul­ti­ple tri­als in­volv­ing is­la­travir — is scrap­ping the de­vel­op­ment of a once-month­ly oral is­la­travir for PrEP. It will, how­ev­er, move on with new stud­ies test­ing the dai­ly and week­ly dos­es of the same drug to treat (rather than pre­vent) HIV.

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