Gilead Sciences 100% Cure Rate for HCV

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From the title ” Hepatitis C Medicine Shows 100% Cure Rate”, you’d think the silver bullet has finally been found and there is no reason to look further. Is this serious competition with Abbott’s recent all oral treatment success? Maybe. But wait. The first sentence says “a small number of patients.” At this point, the Gilead trial only involves 25 patients and one had to drop out. I’ll say that’s small! The Abbot study involved almost 571 patients with a 99% cure rate.

Gilead Sciences 100% Cure Rate

Apparently there was hope earlier that Gilead and Bristol-Myers Squibb would combine their drugs, Sofosbuvir and Declatasvir respectively, after a trial of 44 genotype 2/3 patients and 44 genotype 1 patients showed an almost 100% cure rate. There was a small outcry that these two pharmaceuticals should hash out their differences so the world can be rid of HCV. But again, the original trial showing success was not all that big. By the numbers, I’ll pull for Abbott at this point in the competition. Am I missing something? What do you think?

Gilead Sciences and Bristol-Myers Squibb Won’t Work Together

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2012 at 11:26 PM and is filed under Research & Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

http://www.facebook.com/margaret.dudley.77 Margaret Dudley

The combination of Sofosbuvir and Daclatasvir cured without Ribavirin and it was effective in genotypes 1 (1a and 1b), 2, and 3, and there were 88 in the 24-week trials and 82 GT 1s in the 12-week trials. Whereas think Abbott only effective in genotype 1 and needed ribavirin right? We have started a petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/gilead-sciences-stop-withholding-this-cure-for-hepatitis-c because there are plenty of people out there with this disease who cannot take ribavirin for many reasons. Thanks for the opportunity to share this information!
Debbie Green

Part of the Abbott trial was without Ribavirin and reached an 87% cure rate. I’m not sure how many patients that included.
http://www.facebook.com/howie.crawford.5 Howie Crawford

Margaret, Sofosbuvir and Daclatasvir is is very old news at this point.
I thought I would respond because I see so many posts that repeat these same old misunderstands of Gilead’s HCV pipeline and the data sets that are already available. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever reads the data or if they rely on summaries of the data by folks with no medical background.

We will have to see the data sets from the Sofobuvir and GS-5885 trials to see how GS-5885 compares with Daclatasvir for genotype 1 patients. Gilead already has its therapy for genotypes 2/3 patients. Sofobuvir + Ribavirin for which they will submit a NDA 2 quarter 2013. With a treatment duration of 12 weeks. “here are plenty of people out there with this disease who cannot take ribavirin for many reasons”. The proposition that Ribavirin combined with Sofobuvir can’t be taken by patients doesn’t agree with all of the published data sets so far which show therapy is well tolerated and there are no safety concerns regarding blood level abnormalities. Ribavirin combined with Sofobuvir does NOT typically cause anemia, if that is what you are implying. Hgb is reduced, but not to the degree of anemia commonly seen in peg-IFN treatments. If you have different data please post the reference sources. The only have I read all of the publish data on Sofobuvir and familiar hepatitis C and its treatment with but I am also in a trial and on week 10 of Sofobuvir + Ribavirin treatment. I am one of 50 people with hepatitis C genotype 1 previous null-responders who has advanced cirrhosis and HCC (liver cancer) awaiting transplant in the next few months. I have been undetectable since week 2, I have minimal side effects even though I have advanced cirrhosis. While I do appreciate we need as many options as possible, I believe it is misguided to not admit that there is new hope for the sickest of the sick, those close to liver transplant and those post transplant who have recurrence of hepatitis C in their donor livers. I understand fully the gravity of our situation I live it every day and am glad for every day of life I have. Demonizing Gilead for doing what every pharma company is in business to do, make money, in my opinion is naive and really doesn’t help the patients that are in need. Just my two cents worth.