Merck Schedules COVID-19 Antiviral, Vaccine Trials

Merck said it plans to launch two large phase 3 trials of its oral COVID-19 antiviral candidate MK-4482 in September and is also moving ahead with trials of two potential vaccines.

The drugmaker has partnered with Florida-based Ridgeback Biotherapeutics to develop MK-4482, which is currently in phase 2 clinical testing in the U.S. and the UK (DID, May 27).

The phase 3 trials will test the antiviral in outpatient settings and in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Merck believes that the treatment can reduce the duration of symptoms and keep patients from being hospitalized or sent to an intensive care unit.

In an investor call on Friday, Roger Perlmutter, president of Merch Research Laboratories, said the company is in talks to begin a separate phase 2 trial of the antiviral under the National Institutes of Health’s Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) partnership. It has also secured manufacturing capacity to produce “many millions” of doses of MK-4482 by the end of the year, he said.

In addition, Merck plans to launch a clinical study of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, V591, in the third quarter of 2020. The company completed an acquisition in June of Austrian drugmaker Themis BioSciences, which was developing the vaccine in a collaboration with the Institut Pasteur and the University of Pittsburgh.

Perlmutter also said the company plans to begin human testing of another vaccine candidate, V590, which it is developing with the nonprofit research organization IAVI (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative), “within the next few months.” The vaccine uses the same technology as the company’s Ebola Zaire virus vaccine, Ervebo. — Jordan Williams