I was just going through Ligands 10k and they mention a HepDirect HCV inhibitor in preclinical development. Ordinarily I would put little to no value on such a program especially considering it came from a deal a few years ago and nothing (positive) has been made of it since.
With all the HCV hype of late I did a little (not a lot) of digging and noticed Metabasis had done deals with Idenix, Merck (Schering) and Roche. It seems they were working on turning the companies current nucleoside/nucleotide into prodrug versions. I am not sure on the terms of some of these collaborations if they got rights to the compounds and its one of those or if Ligand just decided to do work inhouse and apply the metabasis technology.
If its a real program I hope they sell it while the market is still hot for HCV drugs :-).
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