Biotech Values

[justrpaul]

Thomas S.

from the Vertex 11/2/07 press release:

"Rapid Viral Response (RVR)

In PROVE 1 and PROVE 2 combined, on an ITT basis, 77% of patients receiving telaprevir in combination with peg-IFN and RBV achieved a rapid viral response at 4 weeks (79% in PROVE 1, 75% in PROVE 2), defined as undetectable HCV RNA <10 IU/mL as measured by the Roche TaqMan(R) assay, compared to an average of 12% of patients across the control arms of PROVE 1 and PROVE 2 (11% in PROVE 1, 13% in PROVE 2; p<0.001 for the comparison in each study).

For those patients that achieved RVR, completed 24 weeks of telaprevir-based therapy, and had data available for SVR analysis, 91% achieved an SVR 24 or SVR 12. This finding demonstrates a correlation between RVR and SVR in a 24-week telaprevir-based treatment regimen."

and earlier in the same pr

"Across all the treatment arms above, there were no relapses between 12 and 24 weeks follow-up, i.e. there was 100% concordance between SVR 12 and SVR 24."

This is not the first time that the importance of RVR has been noted. A little digging and you can find many peer-reviewed articles.