Roche's Xofluza may give rise to resistant strains, raising fears of a 'worst case scenario'
In 2018, Shionogi rolled out Xofluza in Japan as a one-dose kill for influenza, with Roche following suit in the US. Soon, though, Japanese regulators noticed the drug was leading to resistant flu strains, and now a new study in Nature confirms the drug leads to specific mutations that may hamper its promise to neutralize the virus in a single dose.
“In a worst case scenario, these mutations could render the drug entirely useless,” Andrew Pekosz, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins who was not involved in the study, told Endpoints News. “They haven’t yet, and it’s not clear why that’s been the case.”
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