The real question is what rate of functional cure, even in the subset with low baseline SAg, will result in meaningful commercial sales. My hunch is that this will only be attractive as monotherapy to some patients with very low baseline levels like 1k or less where they could end up with 25% or higher cure rates as monotherapy.
The flip side is that zero patients on the JNJ drug in phase 2 achieved functional cure, although a bunch had very low SAg on treatment, so there is something unique to the GSK drug that other comparable compounds (ASO/siRNAs) have not shown to date. This deal does suggest that the combos they have in house right now may not be working too well