It was a fairly quiet week as far as news in the drug sector is concerned. The most important news was the failure of AstraZeneca's
AZN antibody cocktail, AZD7442 to prevent study participants who were already infected from developing symptomatic COVID-19. Glaxo
GSK signed a deal with iTeos Therapeutics to co-develop its investigational cancer candidate known as EOS-448.
Recap of the Week’s Most Important Stories
AstraZeneca’s Phase III Study on COVID Antibody Cocktail Misses Goal: AstraZeneca’s phase III study (STORM CHASER) evaluating AZD7442, its investigational cocktail antibody therapy, for the post-exposure prevention of symptomatic COVID-19,
failed to meet the primary endpoint. In the study, AZD7442 failed to show a statistically significant reduction in the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 in adult unvaccinated study participants who had a confirmed exposure to a person with a case of the SARS-CoV-2 virus within the past eight days. AZD7442 reduced the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 by 33% compared to placebo, which AstraZeneca said was not statistically significant. However, in PCR negative participants in the study, treatment with AZD7442 reduced the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 by 73% compared with placebo, thereby showing the cocktail therapy was somewhat effective in people who were not infected
AZD7442 is a combo of two monoclonal antibodies, tixagevimab (AZD8895) and cilgavimab (AZD1061) Several other COVID-19 prevention and treatment studies are ongoing on AZD7442 including PROVENT, a phase III study in pre-exposure prophylaxis and TACKLE, a treatment study in preventing more severe disease in outpatient setting.
