HIV prevention research is accelerating: with the arrival of injectable PrEP, the clock that will signal the end of the AIDS epidemic has never rung closer to striking.
In 2024, the journal Science awarded it the Breakthrough of the Year prize. Lenacapavir, a molecule developed by the American laboratory Gilead, functions as an injectable PrEP, providing protection against HIV infection not by swallowing a daily pill, but by receiving an injection twice a year. By the end of August 2025, the path to its commercialization was opened by the European Commission, which authorized the market launch of the drug under the name Yeytuo. This preventive tool offers the hope of radically changing the trajectory of the epidemic. It has indeed demonstrated 100% efficacy against HIV infection, or even better than oral PrEP, thanks to a higher adherence rate: it is now impossible to forget taking a pill!
A first step
If approved, the treatment will still have to go through several steps before it is actually available in pharmacies. The Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) must still negotiate its price, as well as its reimbursement rate by the Assurance Maladie, a decisive step that usually lasts between twelve and eighteen months. “The European marketing authorization for Yeytuo is only a first step,” confirms the laboratory to Têtu, adding: “Gilead is currently working to identify strategies to make it available as quickly and equitably as possible in France and more broadly in Europe.” For the issue with Yeytuo is that it is an extremely costly treatment: in the United States, the two lenacapavir injections are sold for 28,000 dollars, versus around 1,800 euros for generic oral PrEP over a year in France. Negotiations are also ongoing to set the price of another injectable PrEP, bi-monthly this time (one injection every two months), developed by the British laboratory ViiV Healthcare: cabotegravir, marketed under the name Apretude, which should be much less expensive.
Levering patents, a necessity
In prevention, Gilead’s lenacapavir is particularly well suited for people who cannot benefit from a daily PrEP pill, especially in low-income countries, where this regularity is compromised by limited proximity to health services, notably. If patents were dropped, the treatment could thus change the game in the fight against HIV/AIDS on the African continent: based on 10 million people treated per year — the number of people living worldwide with HIV without therapy — its cost would fall to $41, a calculation from a study published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. The dream of ending the epidemic would then, finally, become an attainable reality within an increasingly near horizon.
Illustration : Romain Lamy
