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Failure Brings Atea and Roche’s COVID-19 Pill Moonshot Down To Earth

Falls Behind Merck’s Rival

 
• By Andrew McConaghie

An attempt to show efficacy even in younger people with mild COVID-19 symptoms has fallen flat in Phase II, and AT-527 will now lag behind rivals Merck and Pfizer.

Atea Pharmaceuticals
Atea's antiviral could still help COVID-19 patients, but its pivotal trial results have been set back to the second half of 2022. • Source: Alamy

Atea Pharmaceuticals and Roche have hit a massive setback in their goal of bringing a COVID-19 oral therapy to market, after a Phase II study of their antiviral AT-527 failed to show an impact on the virus in people with mild-to-moderate symptoms.

The failure of the MOONSONG study looks to be down to the Atea’s ambitious attempt to show an impact on SARS-CoV-2 viral loads across a broad range of 100 participants, two thirds of whom had only mild

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