Take­da suc­ceeds where oth­er phar­mas have failed with PhI­II win for cy­tomegalovirus castoff marib­avir

Marib­avir, once a tri­al dud and mul­ti­ple-time castoff, re­ceived new life from the FDA right be­fore Take­da picked up Shire in 2019. Now, Take­da is post­ing win­ning late-stage da­ta from the drug that could help it suc­ceed where so many oth­ers have failed.

In a 352-per­son tri­al com­par­ing marib­avir to physi­cian’s choice an­tivi­rals, more than twice as many pa­tients on marib­avir achieved CMV viremia clear­ance at eight weeks — the study’s pri­ma­ry end­point, ac­cord­ing to Take­da. Of the 235 pa­tients who re­ceived marib­avir, 131 (or 55.7%) achieved clear­ance ver­sus 28 of 117 (or 23.9%) of those on con­ven­tion­al an­tivi­ral ther­a­pies (p<0.001). Viremia is the iso­la­tion of CMV by cul­ture.

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