GSK investment ViiV pleased with recent HIV treatment results

Global specialist HIV company ViiV Healthcare announced 96-week data from its LATTE-2 study on Monday, reporting that viral suppression rates for the two-drug regimen dosed every four or eight weeks were 94% and 87% respectively, which it claimed is comparable to the rate observed in patients continuing with a three drug regimen, which was 84%.

The company is majority owned by GlaxoSmithKline, with Pfizer and Shionogi also acting as shareholders.

It said the LATTE-2 study is a phase IIb, open-label study investigating the long-acting, injectable formulations of its own cabotegravir and Janssen Sciences’ rilpivirine as a two-drug treatment for patients with HIV-1, who had already achieved viral suppression with a three-drug oral regimen of cabotegravir plus two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs).

ViiV said the study results were published online in The Lancet and were presented at the annual conference of the International AIDS Society (IAS) in Paris.

“Fixed-dose oral treatments containing three or more medicines have advanced HIV treatment by reducing pill burden and providing convenience for people living with HIV,” the ViiV board said in its statement.

“As research into new medicines for HIV progresses, adherence to therapy continues to be essential to achieving viral suppression and reducing the emergence of resistance mutations.

“The LATTE-2 study sought to evaluate injectable cabotegravir and rilpivirine dosed once every four or eight weeks compared with daily oral dosing with cabotegravir + 2 NRTIs.”

ViiV reported that two patients in the eight-week dosing group and one patient in the oral regimen group met protocol-defined virologic failure criteria, and neither patient had evidence of resistance at failure.

Injection site pain was the most commonly reported injection site reaction reported by patients receiving injectable cabotegravir and rilpivirine, although most ISRs were mild at 84% or moderate at 15% in severity, with a median symptom duration of three days.

“These study results are important because we now have data showing the durability and tolerability of long-acting viral suppression for a two-drug regimen out to 96 weeks,” said ViiV’s chief scientific and medical officer John C Pottage Jr.

“Administration of long-acting parenteral medication removes the daily dosing burden for patients and the LATTE-2 results showed that long-acting cabotegravir and rilpivirine maintained viral suppression, with no virologic failures in the four-week dosing group.

“We look forward to results from our phase III programme with long-acting cabotegravir and rilpivirine in 2018.”