The failure of new NUCs - Medivir, Daewoong Discontinue HBV Drug Development

[The_PS]

According to HBV drug watch, it has been indicated that this drug is currently in Phase II. http://www.hepb.org/professionals/hbf_drug_watch.htm

But, now...... it's discontinued .....

Medivir and Daewoong Pharmaceuticals have abandoned the development of lagociclovir valactate (MIV-210), a hepatitis B virus (HBV) compound. Medivir licensed the HBV polymerase inhibitor drug to its partner in March 2010.

Daewoong assumed the exclusive clinical development right from Hainan Noken Pharmaceutical Industry of China, which had been retained as a distribution partner for MIV-210 in the country. According to Medivir, MIV-210 has demonstrated competitive antiviral activity but, like other drugs in this class, does not completely eradicate HBV.

Under the original agreement, Daewoong was responsible for R&D and had marketing rights in South Korea, Japan, and China (including Taiwan, Macao, and Hong Kong). Medivir was entitled to upfront and milestone payments and royalties on sales, and retained the exclusive marketing rights in the rest of the world.

Last month, Medivir reported interim results of its key pipeline asset simeprevir, a protease inhibitor in late Phase III development for hepatitis C that is being developed in collaboration with Janssen R&D Ireland.

Source: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130906/Medivir-Daewoong-Discontinue-HBV-Drug-Development.aspx

[veteranB]

Guys they are terminating these drugs because nucs are on their way out. By the time they release them big pharma will have newer agents. That is it.

You can take Acyclovir and Guncyclovir that is prescribed for HSV  and it will suppress HBV too. It is all same group of drugs. Just Baraclude and Viread  are the favorites now. It has also to do with marketing. So from a business point there is no need to pore funds into something that want compete well.

so called research institutions happily spend funds allocated to them by these smaller companies.  And then will move on to something else.

In reality it is very hard to compete with Big pharmaceuticals like BMS and Gilead.

[newtr]

indeed its a very good and encouraging news for permanent cure. if they want to succed they have to work on cccDna otherwise stay hungry as we are now not fools.

[The_PS]

So sorry to hear this, I just read this paper and hope it will work.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23979965

[StephenCastlecrag]

It is very disappointing news. Another Korean drug, Besifovir (LB80380 also seems to have stopped, despite showing in a clinical 2b trial that it is non-inferior to Entecavir. For new antiviral drugs to be successful, they must do better than existing drugs and be cheaper - very difficult to achieve, or use a different mode of action so that they can be used in case of drug resistance.

There is a huge unmet demand for new Hepatitis B drugs.

[stef2011]

That type of drugs are useless tdf is already the max a polimerase inhibitor can do at a cheap price and since they can t clear hbv there is no market left.only immune therapeutics clearing cccdna can have a market now