Solvadi® On Track To Eclipse Incivek® As The Biggest Drug Launch In History -- By An Order Of Magnitude

The crown shall be passed some time in April, when Q1 2014 sales data for Solvadi^® is made public. We closely monitored the launch of Incivek^®, since it was launched head-to-head, with legacy Schering-Plough's boceprevir (and the split was 85-15 in favor of Incivek, back in April of 2012 -- nearly a billion dollars in the first nine months). Now, even that staggeringly fast-start is being pushed into the rear-view mirror, by Gilead. This market is theirs -- for the foreseeable future -- even at the eye popping $1,000 per pill price level.

Do go read it all, over at Investors' Business Daily -- but here's a bit:

. . . .AbbVie and its partner Enanta Pharmaceuticals are already working on a next-generation regime that will treat more genotypes and also be simpler to take. (A common criticism of the 3D is that it's more complicated than Gilead's promised pill-a-day routine.) Earlier this month, Merck also reported very strong phase-two results for its two-drug combo for genotype 1 patients, some of whom were co-infected with HIV. Johnson & Johnson last October acquired three HCV drugs from GlaxoSmithKline, which it hopes to combine with its already approved Olysio into an all-oral regimen. . . .

Sovaldi, meanwhile, has lately been under pressure both for its $1,000-a-pill price tag and concerns about sustainability — after all, one outcome of finding a curative drug is that the patient population eventually shrinks. Still, Morningstar analyst Damien Conover says Gilead has a first-mover advantage and such strong trial data that it likely will be the biggest player for the indefinite future.

"I think we'll have Gilead representing 50% of the hep C market," he told IBD. "AbbVie will take the lion's share of what's remaining. . . ."

So it goes -- but absent some late-breaking surprise at the annual April London conference (abstracts available March 24), this likely puts Merck's next gen Hep C offerings in a third line position. The exception to that might be the population of patients co-infected -- HCV along with HIV. And that is not a small market. Still, Incivek has shown good results in co-infected patients, as a "current gen" (and slightly cheaper) alternative.