The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Monday 25 October that it had begun the rolling review of a new candidate treatment for Covid-19: molnupiravir (MK-4482 or Lagevrio), an oral antiviral developed by the American pharmaceutical companies Merck Sharp & Dohme and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.
Preliminary results from laboratory studies indicate that the drug “may reduce the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to multiply in the body, thereby preventing hospitalisation or death in patients with Covid-19”, the EMA says.
Molnupiravir is one of ten treatments for Covid-19 considered promising by the European Commission (see EUROPE 12818/13) and one of nine currently under review by the EMA.
Of these nine treatments, five are already awaiting market authorisation. Most of them had already been authorised for a long time in the EU for a use other than the treatment or prevention of Covid-19. This is the case for the anti-inflammatory RoActemra (see EUROPE 12774/8).
For the other four treatments currently under evaluation, no application for authorisation has yet been submitted.
Advance purchase agreements have, at this stage, been signed by the European Commission for three candidate treatments: Ronapreve, (REGN-COV2) developed by the Swiss company Roche, Sotrovimab, from the British company GSK (see EUROPE 12771/1), and the treatment combining the antibodies bamlanivimab and etesevimab developed by the American company Eli Lilly (see EUROPE 12795/19).
More details: https://bit.ly/3uOMP9i (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)