Schering-Plough to start hepatitis C studies

Two individual phase III studies into patients who have never received treatment for hepatitis C (naive) and those who have not responded to therapy will test boceprevir, Schering-Plough (SP) says.

The studies will be randomised, double-blind and will run concurrently non 1,400 patients across several countries.

In both, patients will receive four weeks of treatment with pegintron and rebetol to optimise backbone drug levels and activate the patients’ immune systems.

Fred Poordad, co-principal investigator of the phase III study in naive patients, said: “These studies are designed to demonstrate this combination therapy has the potential to benefit a broad range of patients by significantly increasing sustained response rates with a potentially shorter course of treatment.”

According to the Hepatitis C Trust, the disease, which causes liver damage, emerged and was identified in the 1980s and its estimates there are 200 million people worldwide with the disease, which is normally caused by coming into contact with infected blood.