Merck announced in a press release the results from a multi-arm Phase 2 clinical trial evaluating grazoprevir/elbasvir with or without ribavirin (RBV) in treatment-naïve and previously treated (with peg-interferon/ribavirin [PR]) patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 (GT1) infection -- the C-WORTHy study (Parts A and B). The final results were presented in oral sessions at the 65th American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Annual Meeting and published as separate papers online in The Lancet.
To date, the investigational triple therapy was said to have shown response rates (sustained virologic response1 [SVR] at 4/8 weeks following therapy) ranging from 80 percent to 94.7 percent in cirrhotic and non-cirrhotic patients following six and eight weeks of treatment in this study. The four-week regimen resulted in sub-optimal efficacy.
“Merck is committed to developing an efficacious, well-tolerated therapy suitable for a broad spectrum of patients with HCV,” said Dr. Eliav Barr, vice president, infectious diseases, Merck Research Laboratories. “We are encouraged by the findings for grazoprevir/elbasvir in the C-WORTHy trial and look forward to advancing our broad Phase 3 program, which includes hard-to-cure patients that are of the highest need and least studied to date.”
Interim results from the C-WORTHy study were presented in April 2014 at the 49th Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) and announced by Merck. Read the results and full release