
Roche-Atea’s Covid-19 pill fails mid-stage trial, clouding future for closely watched program
When Merck announced this month that its Covid-19 pill cut newly diagnosed patients’ risk of being hospitalized by 50%, researchers and analysts hoped that other pills would soon prove similarly effective. They paid particular attention to two drugs from Pfizer and Roche.
But on Tuesday, Roche and its biotech partner, Atea, announced that their antiviral had failed a key interim test.
In a Phase II trial, AT-527 didn’t reduce the amount of virus in mild to moderate Covid-19 patients any more than a placebo pill did. That was true for both the patients who received a high dose and those who received the low dose.
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