Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

ABBV/ENTA/GILD—Robyn Karnauskas of Deutsche Bank seems to have things backwards with respect to ribavirin necessity. Based on the PEARL-2 data released today (see table at link in #msg-96615816), ABBV/ENTA are the ones who appear to have an edge vis-à-vis ribavirin usage in treatment-experienced GT1b patients. Specifically, the non-ribavirin arm of PEARL-2 had an SVR12 rate of 100%, while the non-ribavirin arm of GILD’s ION-2 trial (treatment-experienced GT1a/GT1b; no breakdown by genotype subtype) had an SVR12 rate of 93.6%.

Even giving GILD the benefit of the doubt by assuming that the ION-2 GT1b data are better than the ION-2 blended data for GT1a/GT1b, GILD’s data in treatment-experienced GT1b can’t possibly be better than ABBV/ENTA’s data and they are probably somewhat worse.