Synonyms: Actemra® | R-1569 | RG-1569 | RHPM-1 | RoActemra®
tocilizumab is an approved drug (Japan (2005), EMA (2009), FDA (2010))
Compound class:
Antibody
Comment: Tocilizumab is an anti-IL-6 receptor mAb, with immunosuppressive action [11] that is approved for chronic autoimmune indications.
Annotated peptide sequences for this antibody are available from its IMGT/mAb-DB record. SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: In early March 2020, China's National Health Commission issued guidance that allows use of tocilizumab to treat patients with serious COVID-19-induced lung damage. Tocilizumab is predicted to mitigate against the uncontrolled immune response that is triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection [3,15] in some patients and which leads to potentially life-threatening damage to the lungs and other organs. Clinical trials are beginning to reveal outcomes (Oct 2020), but the level of benefit remains unclear [4-5,12-13] and requires further investigations. Differences between the studies (timing of treatment, severity of disease at initiation of treatment etc.) make it difficult to compare results and form a solid conclusion. In early January 2021, data was reported from a small cohort of severely ill, mechanically ventilated COVID-19 patients in the REMAP-CAP trial (NCT02735707) who received tocilizumab. The information released (data not yet peer-reviewed) suggested that tocilizumab (compared to standard care) significantly reduced mortality and that patients treated with this mAb were able to leave intensive care 7-10 days earlier than those who didn't receive the drug. This effect appears to be in addition to the clinical benefit conferred by dexamathasone. As a result of this latest report, the UK Department of Health and Social Care was set to issue updated guidance (on 8th Jan; link to gov.uk press release) which will encourage NHS trusts across the UK to immediately begin using existing stocks of tocilizumab in their treatment of critically ill COVID-19 patients in ICUs. Biosimilars:
![]() Ligand Activity Visualisation ChartsThese are box plot that provide a unique visualisation, summarising all the activity data for a ligand taken from ChEMBL and GtoPdb across multiple targets and species. Click on a plot to see the median, interquartile range, low and high data points. A value of zero indicates that no data are available. A separate chart is created for each target, and where possible the algorithm tries to merge ChEMBL and GtoPdb targets by matching them on name and UniProt accession, for each available species. However, please note that inconsistency in naming of targets may lead to data for the same target being reported across multiple charts. ✖![]() View more information in the IUPHAR Pharmacology Education Project: tocilizumab |
Classification ![]() |
|
Compound class | Antibody |
Approved drug? | Yes (Japan (2005), EMA (2009), FDA (2010)) |
International Nonproprietary Names ![]() |
|
INN number | INN |
8394 | tocilizumab |
Synonyms ![]() |
Actemra® | R-1569 | RG-1569 | RHPM-1 | RoActemra® |
Database Links ![]() |
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Specialist databases | |
IMGT/mAb-DB | 96 |
Reactome Drug
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R-ALL-9681301 |
Reactome Reaction
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R-HSA-9681294 |
Other databases | |
GtoPdb PubChem SID | 178103463 |
Immunopaedia Search | tocilizumab |
PubChem SID | 178103463 |
Search PubMed clinical trials | tocilizumab |
Search PubMed titles | tocilizumab |
Search PubMed titles/abstracts | tocilizumab |
Wikipedia | Tocilizumab |