The 61st annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), also called the Liver Meeting, was held in Boston, Massachusetts, between October 29 and November 2.

The highlight of the meeting was Phase III data presentations from protease inhibitors telaprevir and boceprevir, which are set to dramatically improve the treatment of hepatitis C in combination with standard of care (SOC). Telaprevir did have somewhat stronger efficacy numbers, but because of the difficulty comparing across trials, physicians were reluctant to declare a winner and generally felt efficacy was good in both. Physician comfort with managing rash versus anemia may be a major determinant of how the drugs are used, though if telaprevir is successful in its OPTIMIZE trial evaluating twice, rather than thrice, daily dosing, that could be a large advantage. Physicians were also somewhat nervous about the prospect of resistant mutations developing in patients who are not compliant and prior non-responders, which could impact usage in these subgroups.

Another topic of major interest was the data on combination DAA (direct-acting antiviral agents) treatment. It is still not proven that high rates of cure can be achieved when removing peginterferon from the combination, though there was a signal this may be possible from Boehringer's combination of a protease and polymerase inhibitor with ribavirin (there could be tolerability issues with the particular set of drugs tested, however). BMY's protease inhibitor/NS5A inhibitor combination hinted that better response rates may be achieved in prior null responders using a quadruple drug regimen, but results are quite tentative.

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