Re: MRK’s disingenuous re-definition of null responder
You can see for yourself that MRK’s RESPOND-2 study excluded null responders according to the way this term is conventionally defined to refer to how a patient responded to a prior course of therapy. From the clinicaltrials.gov entry for RESPOND-2:
MRK has stated that they consider 25% of the patients in RESPOND-2 to be “null responders” based on their lack of a 1-log viral-load decline during the 4-week SoC lead-in period in RESPOND-2 itself rather than how the patients responded during a prior course of therapy. This is a disingenuous re-definition of null responder that is substantially different from how the term is used by VRTX and the rest of the HCV industry.