New PI'S and Riba

I wonder what it is about Riba? There never seems to be any refinements or any attempts to work with it to lessen the sides.  Since Interferon is the  necessary  drug I wonder why interferon is not tried with  Nucleoside Polymerase Inhibitor, Protease Inhibitor,  Non-nucleoside Inhibitor and other compounds  maybe with all these together or with others without the Riba.  Riba is the monster yet everyone is trying to add their drugs to SOC and just adding more sides to what is there.  I think its time to start thinking outside the box.

[Isobella]

Vertex tried just that...telaprevir and interferon with no riba.  

Didn't work so well.  Actually sucked big time for one of our forum members who was unfortunate enough to be in the no riba arm.  

Mutations can be nasty buggers and I think that is why at this point the focus is on adding a drug to the SOC mix that will improve cure rates and also reduce tx time.  

[newleaf09]

They are trying all kinds of exciting things these days.  A few are non-interferon OR riba.  The interferon is the worse drug and it would be great to develop a more specific TX without having to make the entire immune system go nuts.  Go to the NATAP site:
http://www.natap.org/hcv.htm
They print reports from all of the spring liver meetings.  Most of them are on the new experimental drugs being trialed.  There's a lot of good news in there, with just more fine-tuning needed.