Hepatitis C has never really captured big headlines in the U.S., as it has never benefitted from massive awareness boosting campaigns that have supported research for, say, HIV, or breast cancer. But hepatitis C has clearly emerged as one of the biggest opportunities in pharmaceuticals over the past few years. There are more than 3 million people in the U.S., and an estimated 170 million worldwide, with this liver infection that can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer.
What is insane is that most people have never bothered to get treated, partly because the infection takes years to fully wreak havoc. The other reason is the standard of care with a combination of drugs—pegylated interferon alpha and ribavirin—causes flu-like symptoms that last for almost a year, and usually cures only 30-40 percent of patients. Essentially, most people figure the treatment is worse than the disease. Combined with the millions unaware of the infection, the potential for a health catastrophe could quickly become a morbid reality.
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What is insane is that most people have never bothered to get treated, partly because the infection takes years to fully wreak havoc. The other reason is the standard of care with a combination of drugs—pegylated interferon alpha and ribavirin—causes flu-like symptoms that last for almost a year, and usually cures only 30-40 percent of patients. Essentially, most people figure the treatment is worse than the disease. Combined with the millions unaware of the infection, the potential for a health catastrophe could quickly become a morbid reality.
While people on Wall Street like to embrace a simple storyline with clear winners and losers, the hepatitis C virus is one tricky adversary. Like HIV, it has a tendency to mutate and develop resistance capabilities, whenever scientists throw a new antiviral drug against it. So there isn’t likely to be a single magic bullet. The most likely route to success is with a combination of two, three, or maybe four antiviral drugs that attack the virus from different angles, making it much harder for the bug to mutate and escape one drug. Now that there is a safety net in the form of the new protease inhibitors, will the infected take advantage if it? And what of the millions unaware that they are infected? How can they be helped?
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| For the First Time, There Is A Safety Net For HCV. Will It Be Trusted? |
The new Protease Inhibitors raised the bar very high, by getting cure rates up to around 80 percent. Doctors are certainly eager to get rid of the nasty interferon part of the regimen, but they will only do that when a new regimen can do at least as well on cure rates. Without question, the bar on the safety net is set quite high already.
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