In 3-year data from the study, the subcutaneous, long-acting capsid inhibitor lenacapavir (Sunlenca) demonstrated sustained suppression with no emergence of resistance in highly treatment-experienced individuals with multidrug-resistant HIV. The findings were presented at the recent IDWeek annual meeting in Los Angeles.
In this ֱ video, Joseph Eron, MD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses the results.
Following is a transcript of his remarks:
The study I want to talk about is a long-term follow-up of subcutaneous lenacapavir in people that were highly treatment-experienced and had multi-drug resistance.
This is a study we've seen several times in the past and it's been published, but at this point we're now seeing the 3-year results. These were highly treatment-experienced people who were viremic, some were randomized, or some were just started on lenacapavir plus an optimized background.
So what we're looking at now in year 3 is to see how sustained this suppression is. So at the end of 2 years, there were 54 people left on the study and the percentage of people suppressed was just around 80%. And what we see after another additional year is that two people dropped out -- one because of patient choice, another because of a side effect -- but the number of people suppressed remains high. There were no virologic failures over the second to third year and no resistance emergence. So a sustained effect of this long-acting therapy with a background of optimized therapy. And in addition, the CD4 cell count continues to climb.
So this study shows that once someone becomes suppressed on long-acting lenacapavir in an optimized background, they tend to sustain suppression.