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new hcv treatment Jan 30, 2009 what are the latest treatments & what new drugs are on the horizon & how long will it be before they're available? |
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| Response from Dr. McGovern
 There are several new classes on the horizon for the treatment of HCV including protease inhibitors and polymerase inhibitors and other classes. There are several agents within each class as well that are being developed by many different pharmaceutical companies. The agents that are the furthest along in the protease category include telaprevir and boceprevir. These agents lead to dramatic declines in virus levels in the blood. The problem is that they are associated with rapid onset of drug resistance. Fortunately, it appears that when you combine these drugs with pegylated interferon and ribavirin, drug resistance is minimal. The polymerase inhibitors appear to have a much higher barrier to drug resistance than the protease inhibitors. The hope is that in the future there will be multiple drugs from different classes which can be combined together - just like we do for the treatment of TB and HIV... | ||||||||
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