AbbVie Hepatitis C Treatment Cures 97 Percent Of Liver Transplant Patients

AbbVie announced data from its research in Hepatitis patients with HIV-1 this week at the Liver Meeting 2014. According to the study, 33 out of 34 patients treated with AbbVie’s experimental antiviral cocktail of ombitasvir, ritonavir, dasabuvir, ABT-450, were cured of the virus after 24 weeks.

According a company announcement, the results were as follows:

• In adult patients, TURQUOISE-I demonstrated sustained results 12+ weeks after being treated, including 93.5 percent after 12 weeks of treatment and 90.6 percent after 24 weeks of treatment, respectively.
• In adult liver transplant patients that were treatment-naïve following their transplant and were suffering from recurrent gt1 HCV infection, CORAL-I showed 97.1 percent SVR rates after 12 and 24 weeks of receiving treatment.

These results give the company some hope that AbbVie’s treatment could add a valuable option to patients who are highly susceptible to disease.

"Patients living with both chronic HCV and HIV have been historically considered more difficult to treat," Barry Bernstein, M.D., VP, infectious disease development, AbbVie, said. "TURQUOISE-I is one of the few dedicated studies looking specifically at this population, who are seen in everyday clinical practice. These data will help us gain a better understanding of how our investigational treatment works in this subpopulation of genotype 1 patients."

Liver transplant patients especially are in dire need of new hepatitis C meds that don’t have as many side effects. The disease not only can result in organ failure, which necessitates liver transplants, but the infection almost always reappears after a patient receives a transplant, according to a Bloomberg report.

The new Hepatitis C treatment is a key player in AbbVie’s pipeline, according to Alex Aftaie, analyst at BMO Capital Markets. It’s been estimated it could rack up $2 billion in Hepatitis C treatment sales next year if the drug is approved. This is good news for the company following the collapse of its $52 billion buyout deal for Shire last month.

Abbvie anticipates that the U.S. FDA will approve its first hepatitis C treatment by the end of the year. Two other companies already have similar products in the works, including Gilead Sciences which has had two drugs approved, and Merck & Co., though its drug has yet to hit the market.