Vertex is completing midstage testing of its drug telaprevir, a hepatitis C protease inhibitor.
New treatments like boceprevir and telaprevir promise to increase that to 60% or 70%.
Vertex: A Reason To Worry: Are Vertex Pharmaceuticals bulls getting too excited about telaprevir?
Telaprevir can cause a significant rash, which is serious in 5% of patients.
He argues that newer agents will supplant telaprevir much faster than anyone expects.
In what we would call partial responders MRK has a different definition, SVR was 40-52% for boceprevir vs. 54-59% for telaprevir.
FORBES: Vertex Edges Merck In First Round of Hepatitis C Fight
In prior relapsers, SVR was 69%-75% for boceprevir vs. 83-88% for telaprevir.
FORBES: Vertex Edges Merck In First Round of Hepatitis C Fight
Data from a small, midstage clinical trial with its protease inhibitor, known as vx-950 or telaprevir, were "nothing short of spectacular, " says Markowitz.
Vertex has a drug in the pipeline called telaprevir that it hopes will be the first in a new, more powerful generation of hep C treatments.
Also, 24 of 26 patients who received telaprevir in early-stage trials were cured of hepatitis C after six additional months of treatment with interferon and ribavirin.
Telaprevir is a protease inhibitor that attacks the virus directly and blocks its replication, much the way antiretrovirals revolutionized the treatment of AIDS over a decade ago.
Used in a 24-week treatment regimen, telaprevir helped drive away the virus in 61% and 65% of patients, respectively, in two midstage trials when combined with standard treatment.
In one trial reported at the ongoing Boston meeting, 18% of patients on telaprevir dropped out of the study early, versus just 3% of patients on existing therapy.
Thirty-one percent of telaprevir patients who had gotten no benefit at all from previous treatments with the current hepatitis C regimen, a combination of interferon and antiviral drug ribavirin, had SVRs.
Amid a big meeting of liver specialists in Boston, Vertex shares plopped 17% Monday following analyst downgrades on decent but less than stellar results for the company's experimental hepatitis C drug, telaprevir.
Vertex' telaprevir suffers somewhat from being a front-runner.
The argument goes that even though Vertex is going to sell a ton of telaprevir over the next few years, sales could crater when even newer drugs hit the market and completely change things again--hence the excitement about both Zymogenetics and Idenix.
Amid a big meeting of liver specialists in Boston, Vertex (nasdaq: VRTX - news - people ) shares plopped 17% Monday following analyst downgrades on decent but less than stellar results for the company's experimental hepatitis C drug, telaprevir.
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