Gilead is a great American company, and it’s a great global company. Its drugs have had substantial impact on people’s lives. Compared to what was a death sentence a couple decades ago, now those with HIV and even AIDS can live a normal life. Gilead’s HIV/AIDS drugs have brought in a lot of money such as Genvoya, Truvada, Odefsey, and others. With nearly $23 billion in sales, its takes home nearly $7 billion in profits. Its market capitalization, at a share price of $74.57 per share, is nearly $94.7 billion. Sitting on $21 billion in cash, it must continue to develop and innovate in the world R&D market. The company is not a stranger to controversy. In fact, most recently the Donald Trump White House and Gilead locked horns over a patent that the government argues should be its intellectual property. With nearly 12,000 employees at their San Francisco Peninsula headquarters, the company generates a lot of wealth for the region and beyond along with saving a lot of lives.
Negative Data Points
Randomized controlled trials were not going well for remdesivir as the pandemic spread and horrifically intensified. For example, as the pandemic spun out of control during the period between February and March, a clinical trial in China investigating remdesivir led to the conclusion that the antiviral was not effective in reducing the time for improvement from COVID-19 or in helping to reduce mortality. Additionally, patients experienced a number of adverse events requiring Chinese research sponsors and investigators to terminate the remdesivir clinical trials.
In these studies, 237 patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to a treatment group (158 to remdesivir and 79 to placebo). Remdesivir use led to no material clinical improvement. However, patients receiving remdesivir had a faster time to clinical improvement than those receiving placebo, among patients with symptom duration of 10 days or less. Interestingly, adverse events were reported in 102 (66%) of the remdesivir recipients versus 50 (64%) of 78 placebo residents. The study team halted the remdesivir study early.
Remdesivir Gets a U.S. Government Pass: Great Viral Marketing
Because the most powerful federal government in the world (e.g. Dr. Fauci and NIAID and the FDA) made its case, remdesivir was the drug of choice now despite the facts that it did nothing to help mortality rates, study goal posts were changed, and Chinese studies were questioning any value.
But there were a few days of sick time reduced, and NIAID agreed that something was better than nothing. Hence, moving forward all placebo patients in the ACTT Trial would receive remdesivir, and a great shift from “investigational” to “accepted” occurred.
Gilead couldn’t have asked for a better outcome given the questionable performance of the drug. The marketing brand was given the greenlight, and a powerful one at that with worldwide implications.
By April 2020, many in the government—industry—academia circles were hot on remdesivir as the most promising COVID-19 treatment.
The World Health Organization (WHO Solidarity Trial) included the antiviral drug as one of four major investigational treatments, as did the European Discovery Trial. And why not? It was given the full green light by the U.S. Government.
