::: HCV News :::

Vertex Pharmaceuticals released additional clinical data Wednesday demonstrating the potential for its experimental hepatitis C drug telaprevir to significantly improve the cure rates in patients who failed prior treatment.

nterim data from an ongoing phase II study showed that treatment with a telaprevir-based regimen resulted in rates of sustained viral responses (SVR), or hepatitis C cures, ranging from 55% to 90% across four different patient groups, all of whom failed to respond to prior therapy to varying degrees.

To put these results in perspective, last March, Vertex presented data from a different phase II study that treated patients who also failed prior therapies. In that study, 55% of patients re-treated with a telaprevir-containing regimen achieved an SVR, or cure, compared with 14% of patients who were re-treated with current standard of care.

The new data released Wednesday, therefore, appear to bolster Vertex's claim that telaprevir can improve the cure rate for even the most difficult-to-treat patients -- those who don't respond to standard hepatitis C therapy of long-acting interferon and ribavirin.

That claim needs to be proven, of course, which is why Vertex is running telaprevir through an extensive phase III trial program. Results from studies in both treatment-naive and treatment-failure hepatitis C patients are expected in the middle of next year.

Vertex has competition in the race to develop the first new drug that acts directly against the virus causing hepatitis C. Schering-Plough also has a drug, boceprevir, in phase III studies which has shown promising results in earlier studies. However, boceprevir doesn't appear to work as well as telaprevir in treatment-resistant patients