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VIDEO: Ibalizumab reduces viral load in patients with MDR HIV
NEW ORLEANS — Jacob Lalezari, MD, medical director for Quest Clinical Research, discusses results from a phase 3 trial of ibalizumab — a long-acting humanized monoclonal antibody administered intravenously every 2 weeks — which significantly reduced viral load in treatment-experienced patients with multidrug-resistant HIV. Among the study participants, 83% achieved at least a 0.5 log10 decrease in HIV-1 RNA by day 14 of therapy, and 60% achieved at least a 1 log10 decrease in viral load.
“[There is] very significant antiviral activity with ibalizumab in this most difficult, most vulnerable population,” Lalezari says. “Not enough to potentially stop the virus as a single agent in somebody who’s failing, but definitely an important new tool with which to cobble together a regimen — potentially the last regimen — for a patient to both get their virus under control and then prevent the spread of that virus to somebody else.”
Disclosure: The study was supported by TaiMed Biologics.