EASL meeting hears impressive data on hep C candidates from Boehringer, Novartis and Bristol-Myers

There was a batch of good news coming out of the 46th annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) in Berlin, Germany, last week, with Phase II data on product candidates from Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb, all vying to come into the market for hepatitis C treatment, a therapy sector that now has a significant unmet medical need and has been forecast as likely to reach a value of $8.5 billion by 2016 and $15 billion by 2019 by analysts.

New data presented at the EASL highlighted the efficacy of independent German drug major Boehringer Ingelheim’s once-daily oral protease inhibitor BI 201335, in both treatment-naive and -experienced patients with chronic genotype-1 hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Genotype-1 HCV is the most challenging genotype of HCV to treat.

Results from SILEN-C1 trial show high rates of sustained viral response (SVR, which is considered viral cure) in patients with no previous treatments, who received either 120mg or 240mg BI 201335 once-daily plus the current standard-of-care (SOC), ie, pegylated interferon (PegIFN) and ribavirin (RBV). Up to 87% of patients were able to shorten overall treatment duration from 48 to 24 weeks. In the SILEN-C2 trial, in non-responding patients, the 240mg dose of BI 201335 once daily also achieved impressive results in a population that has not responded to SOC, and achieved such without a lead in therapy.