Chinese trials for Gilead’s antiviral drug to treat coronavirus still far from reaching patient recruitment goals
- Antiviral remdesivir is being trialled as a treatment for the novel coronavirus in 10 hospitals in Wuhan
- Researchers have recruited more than 230 patients for the trials so far, short of the 760 targeted
Currently, the trials involve more than 200 severe patients and over 30 mild or moderate cases, according to Xu. This is up from the 168 severe and 17 mild or moderate cases reported by Xu's colleague Zhang Xinmin at a separate press conference on Saturday, but still less than a third of the targeted total of 760 patients, according to documents for the study listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, an international clinical trial registry run by the United States National Library of Medicine.
The researchers had aimed to recruit 308 mild and moderate patients with the novel coronavirus and 452 severe cases, with both trials involving hospitalised patients with Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, taking a nine-day dose of the drug to test its efficacy and safety.
Patients who have received any other experimental treatments within 30 days of the time they are screened are excluded from the remdesivir trials, according to the documents on ClinicalTrials.gov, possibly limiting the pool of qualified candidates, especially as authorities ramp up containment measures.
Gilead’s chief medical officer Merdad Parsey told state-run press agency Xinhua on Monday that the company was expecting the results of clinical trials for remdesivir in April. World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had also said at a press conference on Thursday that preliminary results for the remdesivir trials as well as another experimental coronavirus treatment involving the combination of two HIV drugs, lopinavir and ritonavir, were expected in three weeks.
