looks like schering is out with some data

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/finance/external/reuters/SIG=1165jh9eu/*http://www.reuters.com/legacyArticle?duid=mtfh69767_2007-10-18_13-16-05_wnas6937_newsml&rpc=44&type=marketsNews

"NEW YORK, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Schering-Plough Corp (SGP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday reported promising early results from a mid-stage study involving its experimental hepatitis C drug, boceprevir.

The company said the favorable results were seen in a Phase II trial of patients who had never previously been treated for their infections with the liver-damaging hepatitis C virus.

One group of patients received boceprevir along with Schering-Plough's widely used current dual therapy -- the injectable interferon drug Peg-Intron and anti-viral pill ribavirin -- while another group received only Peg-Intron and ribavirin.

After 12 weeks of treatment, up to 79 percent of patients in the boceprevir group had undetectable levels of the virus in their bloodstreams, compared with 34 percent of those taking only Peg-Intron and ribavirin.

The company noted that the results, although encouraging, were only preliminary. (Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf and Ransdell Pierson, editing by Gerald E. McCormick) "

[beamishboy]

wonder why the control arm,taking SOC,had such a low percentage of responders at week 12?.....very interesting news,thanks for the posting.....

[Willy50]

That's the first thing that sprang out at me too.  The Vertex control arms had 39-41% I thought.  Maybe this a small group and so the small numbers skew the stats?  I'd like to see the 4 week data which may be a clue to the approxiamate SVR rate.  One other issue with SVR rate is that in theory if boceprevir had a lower rate of resistant mutations it might have a lower rate of rebounds even IF it had a slower response rate.  The numbers look comparable to Vertex however.

I'm not sure; have there been threads posted here about abstracts to be presented on this new promising compound?  They will be interesting to read and hear about.

Thanks for the article.

Willy

[mremeet]

One possible reason is because rescue drugs were prohibited during that timeframe. And if they were prohibited, obviously anemia and neutropenia would only be dealt via IFN and/or riba dose reductions, thereby lowering the 12 week UND percentile.

[sunspot]

I’m also a bit confused with the numbers. I thought after 48 weeks SOC, GT1’s had a 40-50 percent SVR.
Does this fit with a UND of 34-41 percent at 12 weeks?