Biotech Values

[mcbio]

ACHN’s NS5A successor to ACH-2928 is….(drum roll)………ACH-3102:

I listened to a recent ACHN presentation (JMP) and got the impression that ACHN is hoping that 3102 turns out to be a better NS5A than BMY's NS5A inhibitor. One of the JMP slides notes that 3102 has 10x - 100x improvement in activity against resistant mutations compared to BMS-052. If that turns out to be the case, perhaps ACHN's own in-house combo of a PI+NS5A could turn out to be sufficient for genotypes beyond just 1b (item 3 of #msg-66070779 ). Long way to go on this front of course.

Also, I thought it was interesting that for ACH-2684, the pan-genotypic PI that is the follow-on to ACH-1625, ACHN really seemed to be promoting the fact that 2684 is very unlikely to have drug-drug-interactions. ACHN specifically noted that 2684 has no effect on CYP450 iso-enzymes. I don't recall ACHN ever going out of their way to promote lack of DDI possibility with 1625 so that makes me wonder if 1625 could end up being susceptible to DDIs.

All told, I think a combo of 2684+3102 probably represents ACHN's best competitive bet. ACHN did talk about going into PI+NS5A combo trials in mid-2012 with results in 1Q13 but did not rule out utilizing 1625 as part of the initial combo testing given how much further along it is. That said, I think ACHN is probably just trying to save face for 1625 for the time being and I bet ACHN winds up testing the 2684+3102 combo in trials, which make sense given that both of these drugs are being promoted as pan-genotypic whereas 1625 is not.