Gilead and Achillion have posted impressive clinical study results for a new all-oral combination hepatitis C treatment.
The phase II study was assessing the safety and efficacy of using Achillion’s experimental drug ACH-3102 with Gilead’s established and major blockbuster hep C pill Sovaldi (sofosbuvir).
It involved 12 previously untreated patients with genotype 1 hep C and three months after the completion of therapy, all 12 (100%) of the patients achieved sustained viral response (SVR12), which is in clinical terms tantamount to a cure.
This is currently the shortest duration and highest response achieved by any two-drug treatment for the disease, and beats Gilead’s new combination therapy Harvoni (ledipasvir and sofosbuvir), which received FDA approval last year and is expected to generate sales of around $10bn in 2015.
Dr Milind Deshpande, president and chief executive of Achillion, said: “Our goal is to deliver short duration, widely accessible treatments to all HCV patients. 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.”
Deshpande is now hoping to use these data as a platform for the firm to progress its own, all Achillion drug combination therapy using ACH-3102 with another experimental drug called ACH-3422.
The hep C market has become intensely competitive over the past year, with new combination treatments from Bristol-Myers Squibb, AbbVie and Gilead all hitting the US market in 2014.
But even though competition is fierce, the new market is lucrative, currently being valued at $20bn for the new form of oral hepatitis C drugs – one of which is likely to be an all-Achillion regimen, predicted to hit the US market by the end of the decade.
Deutsche Bank analyst Alethia Young said in a note to clients that she expects the treatment to cost about $35,000 (£23,000) per patient per year, assuming a 55% discount – far less than the $90,000 plus price tag for Gilead’s current combination treatment Harvoni.
A lower price combined with a quicker and better response rate will make it more attractive to payers and patients, but it will still be late to market, potentially limiting its full sales potential.