Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

GILD/VRUS/JNJ/Medivir/etc—has anyone else wondered about the impact of combining 7977 with an HCV protease inhibitor given that 7977 requires at least one serine protease to be activated?

I haven’t heard anyone raise this issue on any investor CC. If this kind of drug interaction turns out to be detrimental, I would expect it to affect not just PSI-7977, but rather all of the nucleotides that rely on a protease for prodrug metabolism.

Curiously (considering the sheer size of the VRUS deal), GILD says it has not yet conducted drug-interaction studies of PSI-7977 with any of GILD’s own HCV drugs.