The 45th annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), being held April 14-18, 2010 in Vienna, Austria, will showcase interesting data from the burgeoning hepatitis C pipeline. The most advanced hepatitis C drugs, protease inhibitors telaprevir and boceprevir, are due to report their first Phase III data this quarter (after EASL) and mid-year, respectively. While most of their data at EASL will be incremental, there are a number of earlier stage drugs with new and updated data. Some of these drugs are also protease inhibitors, but with more convenient dosing, and others have complementary mechanisms.

Companies are hoping to use the new STAT-C (specifically targeted antiviral therapy for HCV) drugs with complementary mechanisms in combination, possibly in place of, rather than concomitantly with, current standard-of-care (SOC) therapies peg-interferon and ribavirin. However, this strategy remains to be proven, and another option is to use combinations to reduce the amount of time an individual STAT-C drug must be given in combination with SOC. While only one clinical study of STAT-C drugs given in combination is reporting data at this year's EASL, information on the individual drugs will help to gauge how the competition is stacking up.

Another general topic of interest at this year's EASL is likely to be the relationship of IL28B genotyping to response. A number of published papers within the past year have found associations between polymorphisms in and around this gene, which encodes a type of interferon lambda, and response to peg-interferon/ribavirin (PR). While the research is still early stage, if it holds up in prospective testing, it could influence future treatment usage and regimens.

The table in the attached PDF details the more noteworthy presentations on drugs in development for hepatitis C, along with comments and what type of data is expected to be released. We have also noted a few related non-EASL catalysts that are expected soon. In addition, we have provided a calendar of all the EASL-related catalysts listed in BioMedTracker.

For the full report, please download the PDF version at the top of this page.

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