Roche's Fuzeon effective against resistant HIV

Swiss drug major Roche welcomed results presented at the 2006 Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, held in San Francisco, USA, showing that over 90% of treatment-experienced patients on its HIV drug Fuzeon (enfuvirtide) achieved undetectable viral load.

90%-95% of patients in the 24-week Phase II evaluation who initiated therapy with Fuzeon in combination with US drug major Merck & Co's investigational integrase inhibitor, MK-0518, can achieve HIV levels of less than 400 copies/mL. Such response rates have never been achieved in clinical trials of HIV patients living with drug-resistant virus, Roche noted.

Known as the "Fuzeon effect," the boost to antiviral efficacy achieved by adding Fuzeon to other new drugs has been consistently demonstrated across a number of studies. Anton Pozniak, of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, said that "these remarkable results show us that, by partnering Fuzeon and a novel integrase inhibitor, treatment-experienced patients can have a similar chance to achieve the ultimate goal of treatment, undetectable viral load, as treatment-naive patients."