Gilead Sciences Korea’s Genvoya has solidified its No. 1 status in the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment market.

After a successful switching from Stribild to Genvoya, Genvoya’s revenue outperformed that of GSK’s Triumeq starting from the second half of last year. In the first half of this year, Genvoya also topped the HIV drug sales.

According to IQVIA data, the sales gap between Genvoya and Trimeq widened in the first half.

Genvoya’s sales jumped 35.3 percent to 15.4 billion won ($13.7 million) in the first half from 11.4 billion won in the second half last year.

Trimeq’s revenue only inched up 1.4 percent during the same period, ranking second.

Trimeq’s first-half sales remained almost the same at 10.1 billion won this year, compared with 10 billion won last year.

By year-on-year comparison, Genvoya’s revenue skyrocketed 557 percent in the first half, while that of Trimeq only rose 27.9 percent.

As a follow-up medicine to Stribild, Genvoya arrived in the Korean market in February 2017. The drugmaker switched the treatment from tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) to tenofovir alafenamide (TAF).

Gilead Sciences Korea said that Genvoya showed non-inferior efficacy with only 10 percent of the conventional TDF’s dose by lowering the tenofovir levels in the blood to improve the kidney and bone-related side effects.

With Genvoya and Trimeq taking up most of the HIV drug market, Stribild’s sales plunged 91.6 percent to 800 million won in the first half from a year earlier.

Gilead’s Truvada (tenofovir/emtricitabine) and GSK’s Kivexa (abacavir/lamivudine) also suffered a sales decline by 56.7 percent and 30.4 percent, respectively, to 2.2 billion won and 2 billion won, during the same period.

Descovy (emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide), released in June last year by Gilead, sold 18.6 billion won in the first half, surging from 400 million in the second half last year.

hwz@docdocdoc.co.kr

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