any news on when telaprevir will go to market

Question

Has anyone heard when telaprevir will make it to market?  So many rumors flying all around.

Willy50 · Accepted Answer

Nobody knows.  Vertex isn't going to make any claim and the FDA isn't going to taint their objectivity by offering a prediction.  

It seems that the often repeated and repeated prediction is middle of next year.

It is a different question entirely what it will be priced at and what insurance companies will do with regard to paying for the triple therapy.

Many people think the cost will be too expensive..... Vertex, and I would guess Merck would argue that the TX time is drastically reduced, cure rate is way up and that forestalling treatment would result in ultimately higher insurance costs.  In other words new more expensive treatments would save the insurance companies money.

Anyway..... the approval date my not be the only hurdle that people waiting may face.  I suggest that the companies should be working on an aggressive "sales" campaign, not only on the end users, but the end users insurance companies.  Would you drop or switch carriers if they had an unfriendly policy towards the new forms of TX?  Companies also need some time to evaluate and plan a treatment and payment policy on the yet unapproved drug compounds.

willy

Bill1954 · Answer

Hi Gene,

Yeah, you have lots of company here. You might try reposting your question by going to the top of the page, and clicking in the green ‘post question’ button; this will open your own thread for better responses.

Good luck and welcome to the forum—

Bill

gene53 · Answer

Is there anyone in this forum with chronic hep c and chronic liver cirrhosis? I have tried 2 52 week treatments over the last 7 years and the hep c returned after a short time. I am now hoping for new medicine to come available.

jusjames · Answer

million dollar question i am afraid so many have waited for so long now

andy_k · Answer

does anybody know when Telaprevir and/or Boceprevir will be available in Canada after they are approved in US?
thanks

ps
i'm in Canada, just would like to know if somedy has any idea/guess on how long it may take for it to be available here as well...

jusjames · Answer

does it work on g2 ? is it g3 it is not so good on ? cant remember someone just said the other way round i am sure they are wrong

gypsyjoey · Answer

Me too.  I'm still SVR after Telapravir trial with 2 previous attempts with only soc.

banarep · Answer

thanks all.  just wondering.  i did the trial and am svr, but was curious about when others might get it.  there are a lot of people that it will help.  wish they would move on it.

mikesimon · Answer

"By Jonathan D. Rockoff

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases that wraps up tomorrow, there’s been lots of talk about the potential for some experimental treatments for hepatitis C.

Pivotal trials have shown that the two therapies farthest along in development — telaprevir from Johnson & Johnson and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and boceprevir from Merck — are more likely to cure hepatitis C than currently available treatment. There’s widespread anticipation the pills will win FDA approval next year. And they could be followed by the introduction of even more new therapies, the WSJ reports...."

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/11/01/curing-hepatitis-c-will-take-more-than-new-treatments/

nygirl7 · Answer

PS They were saying they would file this summer that just went passed but now it says by end of the year (2011) so who knows..........hopefully sooner rather than later!

nygirl7 · Answer

There is a really good table on fast tracked drugs that did receive approval at:

http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RS22814.pdf

Once the company asks the FDA for fast track they have two months to respond and then the AVERAGE time seems to be six month for approval so...technically if they went to the FDA today we'd be looking at an estimate of probably 8 months and then they'd have to go to market.  This is my guess on it and I could be all wrong but since we dont have any real hard info and the date has changed so many times in the past years that is how I try to look at it.

That is the key I think from trying to decipher it all - when will they go and ask for this status and get things going. That part seems to be the key.