Biotech Values

[oc631]

how certain can we be that just a two-drug combo of GS-7977+an internal GILD NS5A will be sufficient in light of what we saw in the ABT combo trial with ribavirin, notwithstanding that the trial didn't include a nuke?

We just saw 100% SVR rates combining daclatasvir with GS-7977 in GT1.



The substance of GILD's in-house pipeline is a big question mark. As Dew once pointed out they were never much in HCV - and I agree. The late-breaker abstract Idit posted today gives us a glimpse of them throwing their entire mid-stage pipeline into an oral combo (yawn) with little visibility as to which drug will work best with the nuke. Money isn't an issue at GILD so I suspect several two drug DAA combos being tested using three drugs (with Riba) as a hedge. My opinion, though biased, is there will never be a need for more than two classes of drugs when partnering GS-7977 with the right drug in treatment-naive patients.

It is for this reason that I believe those that are writing ACHN and Medivir, and any others, in the PI class off are perhaps being a bit premature.

Medivir is in a very good place. They have a late-stage second-generation P.I., GILD has a questionable pipeline (sans GS-7977), and their results in combination with GS-7977 (if positive) will be in null patients which GS-7977/Riba failed miserably.