ZURICH (SWITZERLAND) – Swiss drugmaker Roche said on Thursday that mixing its drug Actemra to Gilead Sciences’ Veklury medication, also called remdesivir, did not bring down hospital stays for patients with intense COVID-19 pneumonia.
Roche’s anti-inflammation medicine Actemra combined with Veklury, Gilead’s antiviral drug, was not successful to bring down patients’ time in hospitals in the REMDACTA trial. The cocktail was compared with treatment, which makes use of only Veklury and standard care, Roche said in a statement.
The trial also showed the Actemra-Veklury cocktail fell short of meeting key secondary targets, which is reducing the chances of a patient, who will require mechanical ventilation and cutting the risk of death.
Actemra has had uneven results in several COVID-19 trials. While it helped some patients, it did not demonstrate a benefit in others. Veklury, originally developed for the treatment of Ebola, was the first drug approved for COVID-19 patients, though its trials have also generated conflicting conclusions, with regard to its benefits.
Roche Chief Medical Officer Levi Garraway, in the statement, said, “Given the global impact of COVID-19 pneumonia on patients, we are disappointed that the REMDACTA study did not meet its endpoints.”
However, he said the “totality of the data” on Actemra, which includes where it did succeed from other trials, showed it has benefitted certain patients.
Roche has said the varying trial results for its medicine were estimated because of differences in the patients studied, the timing of their treatments and the “endpoint”, or how success or failure is evaluated.
Actemra, which has approval for rheumatoid arthritis, is also used in blood cancer patients whose immune systems spiral after cell therapy treatment. In the year 2020, Actemra became Roche’s fifth-best-selling drug, at more than $3 billion, with nearly $600 million from COVID-19 treatment.