Gilead chief O’Day says company moving apace to generate remdesavir data

In an open letter, Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) CEO Daniel O-Day acknowledges the limitations of the just-released compassionate use data related to the treatment of COVID-19 with antiviral remdesivir but says the objective was treating very ill patients, not conducting a randomized controlled study.

Seven clinical trials evaluating the nucleotide prodrug have been launched thus far, allowing for adaptive design since the medical community’s knowledge of the disease continues to evolve. The first two were initiated in China about two months ago, one in patients with severe disease (since shut down due to low enrollment) and the other in patients with more moderate symptoms. One question, among many, that investigators want to answer is if treatment duration can be shortened to five days from 10.

NIH’s NIAID launched an 800-subject global study on February 21. The World Health Organization (WHO) is conducting one study in Europe, Inserm DisCoVeRy and one globally, Solidarity.

Preliminary data in severely ill patients should be available by month-end. Initial data from the NIAID study and the Gilead study in patients with moderate symptoms should be available next month.

Mr. O’Day says it may seem like an inordinate amount to time to generate the data, but it has only been two months since the first trial began and, under normal circumstances, it can take a year or more to generate results from randomized clinical trials so the pace is has been very quick given the global urgency.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3559964-gilead-chief-oday-says-company-moving-apace-to-generate-remdesavir-data