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Current Hepatitis C Treatment

The current standard of care for chronic HCV is a combination of an interferon-alpha-based product and ribavirin. Approximately 80,000-100,000 patients in the United States receive treatment for HCV.

Pegylated interferon-alpha is administrated by injection and results in abnormally high levels of this cytokine circulating systematically throughout the body. Therapy with interferon-alpha causes a number of side effects, including depression and flu-like symptoms, often experienced during the entire year-long course of therapy required for treatment of HCV. These side effects may make patients feel worse than foregoing treatment, which reduces their motivation to continue HCV therapy. Many patients take additional drugs to treat these side effects, further increasing the cost and the risk of additional side effects to the patient. As a result, poor compliance with the HCV course of therapy may decrease the patient response rate.

In addition to the side effects, current therapies do not provide sustained elimination of the virus, or sustained virologic response, for 47%-54% of genotype 1-treated patients when measured six months after the end of treatment. Due to the lack of alternative treatments, patients without a sustained virologic response have no other treatment option but to undergo a second 48-week course of interferon-alpha based therapy with a different brand of interferon-alpha. This second course of therapy subjects the relapse patient to a similar risk of side effects as the previous course of therapy.

Sales of HCV drugs by 2008 are currently $3 billion and are expected to grow to $5 billion by 2008 due to improved market penetration through increased awareness and improved diagnosis rates and therapies.