Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Re: Do all-oral HCV cocktails require a nuke (or any other specific class)?

ABT data definitely put at least question mark on the requirement of nuke in all oral regimen with short treatment period.

The thinking on this matter has gone full circle, or nearly so. A few years ago, the conventional wisdom—as voiced by such HCV KOL’s as VRTX’s CSO, Peter Mueller, was that nukes were simply too toxic to be relied upon. (Mueller had to change his tune, of course, when VRTX acquired the two nukes from Alios.)

On the other side of the fence were a few companies, most notably Pharmasset, who said that only a nuke was capable of providing the requisite barrier to resistance and that non-nuke polymerase inhibitors were simply too feeble to be worth pursuing in earnest. After the acquisition of Pharmasset by GILD, CSO Norbert Bischofberger became an advocate for this viewpoint. However, ABT clearly disagrees.

The moral (if there is one) is that, regardless of class, each drug has to be evaluated on its own merits.