Payers and patient compliance will determine winners as Incivek and Victrelis hit HCV
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
While data on Vertex/Janssen's Incivek (telaprevir) published on 27 June in the New England Journal of Medicine provided little new insight into the drug's efficacy beyond what was already known from the EASL meeting in April, the companies believe that they have the edge over Merck's boceprevir in winning round physicians to using their drug in both naive and previously-treated patient groups. However, as pointed out in a recent survey, the pattern of prescribing for the two HCV NS3/4A protease inhibitors is likely to be heavily influenced by the behaviours of payer organisations, many of which seem unwilling to reimburse either drug in treatment-naive patients.