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.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER