Pharma Blog Watch

Targeting Viruses (In the Pipeline)
In his post, Derek Lowe discusses hepatitis C as a disease target. "Antiviral drugs are one of those big unmet medical needs that we talk about in the drug industry," he writes. "The problem is, the reason that some of these big opportunities are unclaimed is that they're not easy to address. As I've said here before, one big problem with antivirals is that there are a very limited number of good targets for drugs. After all, viruses are pretty stripped-down to start with: they do a limited number of things, but they do them very well indeed. Compared to a relatively target-rich therapeutic area like cancer, infectious disease is a desert."

"Various development programs have come and gone, but no one has been able to really nail this one," he writes. "Vertex is now in the middle of trying to, and … they're really betting a large part of the company on the attempt. Over the next few months, results should start coming out for their PROVE trials of telaprevir (VX-950), and for Vertex's sake, the drug had better work."