Sustained Viral Suppression in Multidrug-Resistant HIV With Lenacapavir at 3 Years

In 3-year data from the CAPELLA study, the subcutaneous, long-acting capsid inhibitor lenacapavir (Sunlenca) demonstrated sustained suppression with no emergence of resistance in highly treatment-experienced individuals with multidrug-resistant HIV. The findings were presented at the recent IDWeek annual meeting in Los Angeles.

In this MedPage Today video, Joseph Eron, MD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses the results.

Following is a transcript of his remarks:

The study I want to talk about is a long-term follow-up of subcutaneous lenacapavir in people that were highly treatment-experienced and had multi-drug resistance.

This is a study we’ve seen several times in the past and it’s been published, but at this point we’re now seeing the 3-year results. These were highly treatment-experienced people who were viremic, some were randomized, or some were just started on lenacapavir plus an optimized background.

So what we’re looking at now in year 3 is to see how sustained this suppression is. So at the end of 2 years, there were 54 people left on the study and the percentage of people suppressed was just around 80%. And what we see after another additional year is that two people dropped out — one because of patient choice, another because of a side effect — but the number of people suppressed remains high. There were no virologic failures over the second to third year and no resistance emergence. So a sustained effect of this long-acting therapy with a background of optimized therapy. And in addition, the CD4 cell count continues to climb.

So this study shows that once someone becomes suppressed on long-acting lenacapavir in an optimized background, they tend to sustain suppression.