CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Two clinical studies published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine demonstrate that treatment with the investigational oral hepatitis C virus (HCV) protease inhibitor telaprevir dosed in combination with pegylated-interferon (peg-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) as part of a 24-week treatment regimen resulted in a significant improvement in the rate of sustained viral response (SVR), considered a cure of the viral infection, in treatment-naïve genotype 1 HCV patients, as compared with the SVR rate for standard therapy dosed for 48 weeks. The data are from two Phase 2b (mid-stage) clinical trials of telaprevir known as PROVE 1 and PROVE 2. In these trials, patients who received a 24-week telaprevir-based treatment regimen achieved SVR rates of up to 69 percent, as compared to SVR rates of up to 46 percent in patients in the control arms of these trials who received peg-IFN and RBV for a standard duration of 48 weeks. Telaprevir is being developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (Nasdaq: VRTX) in collaboration with Tibotec and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma. Telaprevir is currently in Phase 3 (late-stage) clinical development.
