GSK’s ViiV Healthcare has suspended development of a Phase 2-stage HIV antiviral named VH3739937, a GSK spokesperson confirmed to Endpoints News on Tuesday.
The halt was prompted by “preliminary findings in a preclinical study of a similar maturation inhibitor,” according to an update to a federal trials database where the suspension was noted earlier. The update didn’t identify the name of the “similar” drug.
The decision to suspend development of VH3739937 was made “since it does not satisfy our target product profiles (TPPs) for clinic-administered ultra long-acting or self-administered long-acting HIV treatment,” GSK’s spokesperson said in an email. A Phase 1 trial of the drug was also halted.
The placebo-controlled trial was expected to have data in the second half of this year, according to a GSK quarterly update from July. GSK is the majority owner of ViiV, which says it has 17 prescription HIV medicines. Pfizer and Shionogi also partly own ViiV.
The experimental drug belongs to a class of treatments called maturation inhibitors, which prevent HIV from maturing and impacting additional cells. While many people are able to control HIV with one pill a day, there are drug-resistant strains, and multiple drugmakers are working on new antivirals to address the issue.
The maturation inhibitor has an oral half-life that could potentially allow for once-weekly dosing, according to an article published in Viruses last month. The authors said the experimental medicine is “structurally similar” to GSK3640254 — an HIV maturation inhibitor that GSK culled in early 2023 after it had been through Phase 2.
GSK had four other Phase 2 HIV assets at the time of its second-quarter presentation, including two capsid protein inhibitors, an integrase inhibitor and a broadly neutralizing antibody.