Although Business Week puts the two candidates nearly neck-and-neck, most well-informed and truly-independent observers I've read feel the race's lead belongs to Telaprevir® -- the candidate of Vertex Pharmaceuticials -- and it'll be Telaprevir's to lose. Most think New Merck's Boceprevir® (acquired via the Schering-Plough bust-up/fold-in) is lagging -- by as much as seven to ten months, behind Vertex's Telaprevir. In any event, here's Business Week's snippet:
. . . .Vertex, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and its partner Johnson & Johnson, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, havesaid they expect results from final-stage clinical trials by the second half of 2010, with submission to U.S. regulators by year-end. Patients can expect the drugs to be available by 2011, executives said on April 16 at the annual meeting of the European Society for the Study of the Liver in Vienna.
"We’re on the brink of a revolution," Porges said in an interview at the conference. “Investors have been waiting for this for six to seven years, and investigators and physicians have been waiting for almost 10 years.” He has an “outperform” recommendation on Vertex. . . .
Vertex and Johnson & Johnson hold an advantage right now, Porges said, because their drug telaprevir doesn’t cause the same levels of anemia seen as a side effect of its competitor from Merck. Vertex also allowed patients who didn’t respond at all to other therapies into its clinical trials, possibly positioning its drug, which has been in development for at least 12 years, for broader use.
"We think that’s going to be an advantage," said Bob Kauffman, chief medical officer at Vertex. . . .
Again, I think it's Vertex's race to lose -- but I suspect they'll win.
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