Gilead Sciences launches Stribild in UK

Gilead Sciences has made Stribild – its new once-daily single-tablet regimen for the treatment of HIV – available in the UK.

The drug was approved by the European Commission this week for the treatment of HIV-1 infection in adult patients who are antiretroviral treatment-naive or are infected with HIV-1 without known mutations associated with resistance to any of the product's three antiretroviral agents.

Stribild is the third single-tablet HIV regimen developed by Gilead to launch in Europe and combines four different compounds – elvitegravir, cobicistat, emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil.

Treatment guidelines from the British HIV Association recommend the simplification of therapy regimens in order to improve patient adherence rates, thus making this a potentially important new offering.

Dr Anton Pozniak, director for the HIV service at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, said: "In pivotal studies, once-daily Stribild was highly effective and generally well tolerated with a favorable safety profile and is an important advance for HIV patients in the UK."

Gilead is committed to making the new drug available across Europe as quickly as possible.