Brii Bio’s COVID-19 Antibody Cocktail Sees Promising Results in Phase 3 ACTIV-2 Trial

Early data from a Phase 3 clinical trial investigating Brii Biosciences’ monoclonal antibody combination treatment is looking good. The company announced on August 24th, that its antibody cocktail reduced the risk of hospitalization and death in non-hospitalized patients by 78%.

The Phase 3 ACTIV-2 trial is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In addition to Brii, the trial includes notable collaborators in Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

The COVID-19 treatment under investigation is a combination of Brii-developed monoclonal antibodies BRII-196 and BRII-198. In vitro evidence suggests the combination possesses high neutralization activity against multiple COVID-19 variants.

The ACTIV-2 study evaluated 837 patients whose disease had not progressed to the point of hospitalization but was at high risk of serious illness.

Only 12 patients given Brii’s combo ended up in the hospital, compared to 45 in the placebo group. Furthermore, only one patient in the active group died, compared to 9 in the placebo group. The treatment did not cause more serious adverse events compared to the placebo.

Further analysis is needed to compare the effectiveness of an early (≤5 days)  or late (6-10 days) treatment following the onset of symptoms.

The Earlier The Better

The answer is clear, however, that an earlier deployment beats a later one.

Neither Brii’s combination treatment nor Eli Lilly solo antibody treatment bamlanivimab survived the NIH-funded ACTIV-3 trial when the drugs showed little benefit in treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

To date, the only antibody cocktail that is approved to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients is Regeneron’s Ronapreve, also known as REGEN-COV. The treatment administering casirivimab and imdevimab together also recently became the first monoclonal antibody therapy against COVID-19 to be approved in Europe.  

Other treatments for hospitalized patients with advanced symptoms include the steroid dexamethasone and remdesivir, an antiviral drug.

Author

Joy Lin

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