Boehringer Ingelheim reports positive data from hepatitis drug trial

Boehringer Ingelheim has reported positive results from STARTVerso 1, a phase III trial evaluating the benefits of the new hepatitis C treatment faldaprevir.

Data from the study showed that the new once-daily protease inhibitor was able to deliver high viral cure rates and early therapy success among treatment-naive patients with genotype 1 hepatitis C infections.

Both of the evaluated dosages resulted in 87 to 89 percent of patients meeting criteria to stop all treatment after 24 weeks, with 86 to 89 percent of these people going to on achieve sustained virological response 12 weeks after the completion of treatment.

Professor Klaus Dugi, senior vice-president of medicine at Boehringer Ingelheim, said: "We continue to strive towards our ambition to develop a well-tolerated treatment option that considerably improves cure rates in difficult to cure genotype-1 patients."

Last month, the company announced a new collaboration with Presidio Pharmaceuticals to launch a phase IIa clinical trial of a new hepatitis therapy that combines faldaprevir with two other compounds.