Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Whatever the scientific merit of including ribavirin in an all-oral HCV cocktail may be, there’s a sound business reason for including it—at least for the time being—insofar as ribavirin allows companies to test 3-drug all-oral cocktails where one of the three drugs is a known quantity.

Compared to a 3-drug cocktail in which all three drugs are unapproved, a cocktail consisting of ribavirin and two unapproved drugs is less likely to induce safety signals that could cause the FDA to impose a clinical hold on the experimental drugs.