AbbVie Inc's all-oral hepatitis C therapy cured 96 percent of difficult-to-treat patients in a late-stage clinical trial after 12 weeks, keeping the company in the highly competitive race to deliver new treatments for the serious liver disease.
The study of 394 patients with the most common Genotype 1 version of the virus tested the AbbVie regimen in people who had failed to be cured by the older standard treatments of pegylated interferon and ribavirin.
A rival to Gilead Sciences' recently approved Sovaldi, some analysts have said AbbVie's ability to compete could be hampered by a larger number of pills that must be taken.