i think you are missing my point. choosing to develop a nuke + protease + SOC versus a nuke or protease as single agent + soc does not in and of itself say all that much about the future of SOC. it just says that the combination of oral agents will be better than either as monotehrapy with soc. i will admit that the combinability of oral agents - which was a fait accompli imo - does increase the odds of being able to eliminate one or both components of soc down the road, but by no means assures this (see idix and vrtx non-riba containing trials for examples of attempts to eliminate one component of SOC that already failed)
PS: wake me up when an all oral HCV therapy enters the clinic. the headlines labeling the INFORM trial asan "all oral" regimen is largely a misnomer imo since SOC is given as follow on in every arm of the trial
PPS: to beat a dead horse, there will always be failures requiring a new moa, and a well tolerated interferon without cross resistance to the 3 (or 4) major classes of direct acting agents* that you envision in 10 years dominating the market will always find some niche in a worst case scenario - and a niche in a 170 million patient market is nothing to sneeze at
*if HCV follows the HIV paradigm there will be a very few huge winners among the stat-c agents and a whole lotta commercial busts. good luck picking the winners among the tens of oral agents in development