Most US clinicians plan to prescribe Incivek and Victrelis for treatment-naive hep C patients

More than two-thirds of surveyed US clinicians plan to prescribe Vertex/Johnson & Johnson/Mitsubishi Tanabe’s Incivek (telaprevir) and Merck & Co/Roche’s Victrelis (boceprevir) to patients with treatment-naive hepatitis C virus genotype 1 (HCV1), and half of them indicated they will add Incivek or Victrelis to an HCV1 patient’s existing pegylated-interferon (peg-IFN)/ribavirin regimen, according to a news report from health care advisory firm Decision Resources.

Incivek and Victrelis were recently approved as treatments for hepatitis C virus by the US Food and Drug Administration (The Pharma Letter May 16 and 24). As previously reported by TPL, the two new hepatitis C drugs will vie for share of a US market valued at $4 billion, of which Incivek has been forecast to bag the biggest (70%-80%) share, although Merck’s tie-up with sector rival Roche (TPL May 18) could result in a stronger marketing effort than that first expected.

DR’s new US Physician & Payer Forum report entitled Hepatitis C Virus: How Will The Launch of Novel Antivirals Influence US Physician and Payer Attitudes Towards Treatment and Reimbursement? also finds that, among the surveyed clinicians who expect to prescribe Incivek to more HCV1 treatment-naive patients than Victrelis, 64% cite the high sustained virologic response (SVR) rate of Incivek-based regimens as the most important factor in their prescribing decisions. Similarly, the largest proportions of managed care organizations’ (MCO) pharmacy directors who expect to add Incivek to their formularies rank SVR in non-responders and in treatment-naive patients as the most important factors driving the inclusion of Incivek in their formularies.