Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
When used in combination with a currently-available antiviral medication, a new experimental hepatitis C drug eradicated all signs of the disease within six weeks – the highest response and shortest duration ever achieved by any two-drug combination treatment.
As first reported by Reuters on Monday, the experimental Achillion Pharmaceuticals drug (an NS5A inhibitor known as ACH-3102) was used along with Gilead Sciences Inc’s Sovaldi in a mid-stage study test involving previously untreated genotype 1 hepatitis C patients.
Those trials are ongoing and take place over six to eight week periods, the news organization said. The primary goal is to achieve a cure or sustained virological response three months after the completion of the treatment. The results of the trial suggest that the combination could be at least as effective as current therapies offered by competitors Gilead and AbbVie Inc.
The data indicates that ACH-3102 appears to be “best-in-class,” according to Reuters, which could make up for the fact that Solvadi is more effective than a similar product from Achillion, ACH-3422. The pharmaceutical company hopes that a combination of their two drugs could be good enough to compete with similar products offered by other firms, analysts said.
“Achillion, one of the few companies developing hepatitis C therapies independently, plans to begin a mid-stage study this year to evaluate its proprietary doublet,” Reuters said. Based on conservative estimates from Deutsche Bank’s Alethia Young, the company’s regimen could go on sale in the US by 2020 and cost an estimated $35,000 per patient, per year.
The data released by the company on Monday was from interim results of its ongoing Phase 2 trials to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the treatment, which involves 50 mg of ACH-3102 and 400 mg of sofosbuvir administered to patients over a six week period. All 12 of the patients participating achieved sustained viral response 12 weeks (SVR12) post-therapy.
“The ability to further shorten treatment duration to only six weeks and maintain excellent SVR12 rates remains the goal for clinicians and patients, and I am pleased that these Phase 2 results support that goal,” lead investigator Dr. Edward Gane of the Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand said in a statement. “The profile of ACH-3102, represents an important and exciting treatment option to shorten treatment duration for patients infected with HCV.”
“Our goal is to deliver short duration, widely accessible treatments to all HCV patients,” added Dr. Milind Deshpande, President and Chief Executive Officer of Achillion. “We believe that these results with ACH-3102 represent the shortest duration and highest response achieved to date with any two-drug, direct-acting antiviral regimen for HCV. Given the exceptional profile of ACH-3102, we will now be evaluating four- and six-week treatment durations that leverage all of our HCV assets including ACH-3102, ACH-3422, and sovaprevir.”
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hepatitis C is a mild to severe contagious liver disease that can last anywhere from a few weeks to the rest of a patient’s life. It can be either acute or chronic, the latter of which affects over three million Americans, and symptoms include fever, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, discolored urine and abdominal pain.
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