Can Telaprevir reduce treatment duration, side-effects and cost?

Hedwig Kresse, healthcare analyst at Datamonitor, provides expert comment following Vertex Pharmaceuticals announcing results from the phase three Illuminate study:

“The Illuminate study results confirm the findings from the much larger phase three Advance study, which investigated Telaprevir in treatment naïve patients infected with HCV genotype 1.

These results suggest that the duration of therapy can be halved in genotype 1 patients who achieve an extended rapid viral response (undetectable levels of the virus after four and 12 weeks of treatment) with Telaprevir.

The current standard of care for hepatitis C (pegylated interferon + ribavirin) is both expensive and associated with several side effects. For patients infected with HCV genotype 1, this regimen is prescribed for a long duration - 48 weeks.

An agent that can shorten the duration of therapy, such as now shown for Telaprevir, therefore offers benefits in terms of tolerability, as it could significantly reduce the side effects associated with the current standard of care. A shorter regimen would also help to reduce therapy costs.

Telaprevir’s main competitor is Merck’s investigational phase three protease inhibitor boceprevir. Although boceprevir has recently shown good efficacy results in its phase three studies Respond-2 and Sprint-2, cutting the treatment time in half to 24 weeks in suitable patients currently gives telaprevir a significant competitive advantage over boceprevir.”