N.J. pharmaceutical companies lead in development of new Hepatitis C treatment

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http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/04/nj_pharmaceutical_companies_le.html

N.J. pharmaceutical companies lead in development of new Hepatitis C treatment

By Star-Ledger Wire Services

April 20, 2010, 7:30AM

At Fred Poordad’s bustling hepatitis C clinic in the heart of Los Angeles, one

in every five patients receives no treatment. They are waiting for a wave of new

drugs, expected in the next 18 months, that may boost their chance at a cure by

as much as tenfold.

The medicines also may bolster the prospects of Merck, Vertex Pharmaceuticals

and & , the companies in a race to get the first new treatment to

the market in a decade. About half of patients can’t tolerate the side effects

of existing therapies, which generate $2 billion annually in sales. The new

drugs could expand the market to $10 billion in five years, said Geoff Porges,

an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein in New York.

They’re just the first among new therapies anticipated in the next five years as

companies seek a single pill to cure the infection.

Poordad, chief of hepatology at the Liver Disease and Transplant Center at

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, doesn’t object when his patients

elect to wait for the new drugs, a practice known as " warehousing. "

" The warehousing has been going on for the past year or so, " Poordad said. " I

think we’ll see a tremendous increase in the volume of patients that are

treated. That’s the most exciting thing in the field for a long time. "

The drugs closest to market, Merck’s boceprevir and telaprevir from Vertex and

& , are protease inhibitors crafted from the technologies that

led to discoveries made in the fight against HIV.

The new treatments are being tested as additions to current standard treatments.

Both drugs work by blocking the action of the protease enzyme the hepatitis

virus needs to replicate, directly stopping it from spreading.

Merck, of Whitehouse Station; Vertex, based in Cambridge, Mass., and its partner

& , of New Brunswick, have said they expect results from

final-stage clinical trials by the second half of 2010, with submission to U.S.

regulators by year-end. Patients can expect the drugs to be available by 2011,

executives said April 16 at the annual meeting of the European Society for the

Study of the Liver in Vienna.

" We’re on the brink of a revolution, " Porges said in an interview at the

conference. " Investors have been waiting for this for six to seven years, and

investigators and physicians have been waiting for almost 10 years. "

He has an " outperform " recommendation on Vertex and sees the stock gaining 23

percent in the next year.

Hepatitis C is already a billion-dollar annual business for Merck and will drive

growth, said Bergstedt, the company’s senior vice president for vaccines

and infectious diseases. The drugmaker acquired most of its treatment franchise

in the $41 billion purchase last year of Schering-Plough.

The three drugmakers lead a packed field of competitors. A half-dozen other

approaches to curing the disease are in development, with about 30 compounds

being studied.

-- Bloomberg News