RHHBY Roche Holdings Ltd AG (QX)

By Joseph Walker 

Roche Holding AG said its anti-inflammatory drug Actemra failed to help Covid-19 patients in a late-stage clinical trial, the latest setback for a class of drugs that doctors hope can halt a haywire immune reaction linked to the new coronavirus.

In a study of 452 hospitalized Covid-19 patients, Actemra was no better than a placebo in improving patients' clinical status, including the need for ventilators or intensive care. There was no difference in the death rate between the treatment and control groups, with 19.7% of Actemra patients dying after four weeks, compared with 19.4% of patients in the placebo group.

Actemra's failure is the second study failure this month for drugs that block a protein called IL-6, one of many that play a role in the body's immune response to foreign pathogens such as viruses. In early July, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sanofi SA said their IL-6 blocker Kevzara failed to help Covid-19 patients.

Genentech, a Roche subsidiary that markets Actemra, said it would continue to analyze the data to fully understand the results and publish them in a scientific journal. The company continues to study Actemra in other studies, including one pairing the medicine with remdesivir, an antiviral drug made by Gilead Sciences Inc.

"We will continue to generate evidence to provide a more complete understanding of Actemra in Covid-19 associated pneumonia," said Levi Garraway, Genentech's chief medical officer and head of global product development.

Some analysts and researchers have said IL-6 blockers are likely to help certain Covid-19 patients, but that it is challenging to select the right patients and to correctly time treatment when it is mostly likely to help.

"We continue to believe it is likely that IL-6 blockade has a potentially important therapeutic role in select patients," including those who haven't yet gone on ventilators and who have high IL-6 levels in lab tests, said Andrew Baum, a Citi analyst, in a note to clients on Wednesday.

Genentech and Regeneron began their studies after Chinese researchers said in March that Actemra showed promising results in a handful of patients in a noncontrolled study. Researchers hypothesized that the drugs could help stop a severe immune reaction called cytokine storm in which a flood of immune proteins damage blood vessels and allow fluid to seep into the lungs

Doctors desperate for effective treatments have been using Actemra to treat Covid-19 patients, helping to boost sales of the medicine. Anecdotal reports from a number of doctors have suggested that the drug could help prevent death in some patients.

Actemra, whose generic name is tocilizumab, is approved in the U.S. to treat rheumatoid arthritis as well as a type of cytokine storm experienced by some patients receiving a cancer treatment known as CAR-T therapy.

Write to Joseph Walker at joseph.walker@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 29, 2020 13:17 ET (17:17 GMT)

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