A developing medical theory that hepatitis C can be overcome with the same type of drug cocktails that tamed HIV may drive acquisition strategies as companies try to anticipate which products work best with other medicines. Because only a few hepatitis C drugs are approved, and others in testing may not pan out, “we don’t know what the winning formula will be,” Ben Weintraub, an industry analyst at Wolters Kluwer InThought in New York, said during a Bloomberg Industries panel. To raise the odds, “companies are doing M&A and starting new trials on almost a daily basis.”
