Drugs Go From Hit to Dud in Two Years in Hepatitis Race

Jean-Michel Pawlotsky has dj vu.

The doctor in the town of Creteil, just outside Paris, is telling hepatitis C patients to delay treatment until later this year, when two new drugs that may boost their chances of defeating the lethal liver infection hit the market.

Its the same advice he offered two years ago, when earlier medicines developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (VRTX) and Merck & Co. (MRK) were poised for approval. Now he says those drugs, hailed as breakthroughs in 2011, will soon be superseded by products from Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) and Johnson & Johnson. (JNJ)

The pace of innovation, spurred by drugmakers jostling for a slice of a market that may reach $15 billion by 2018, has turned hepatitis C research into one of the fastest-developing areas of medicine. That boosted Gileads shares to a record last month, and left others like Vertex facing dwindling sales as their products quickly go from revolutionary to outdated.

Things are moving very fast, Pawlotsky, who teaches medicine at the University of Paris-Est, said by phone. People are frustrated, they want more, better.

Hepatitis C, an infectious disease that can scar the liver and afflicts about 170 million people worldwide, is transmitted via blood, most commonly among drug users who share contaminated needles.

The disease is still treated largely with injections that can take six months to clear the virus, sometimes dont work, and cause side effects ranging from flu-like symptoms to depression. If untreated for long periods, hepatitis C can cause liver damage that may require a transplant, or cancer.

Lou Reed, a musician who penned songs about his heroin addiction, had a liver transplant in recent weeks after suffering from hepatitis, the Telegraph newspaper reported, without saying which type or where it got the information.

Gilead, a newcomer to the field, in April applied for regulatory clearance of a drug known as sofosbuvir. The pill may become the Foster City, California-based companys top-selling product by 2015, and reach sales of $6.3 billion by 2016, according to the average of nine analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The stock has more than doubled in the past year on optimism about the pill.

Until 2011, there was only one standard treatment: the generic antiviral ribavirin, together with a weekly injection called pegylated interferon, sold by Roche Holding AG and Merck.

Originally posted here:
Drugs Go From Hit to Dud in Two Years in Hepatitis Race