Indian Drugmakers Engineer Hep C Cocktails Impossible in West
- New cocktails could help tackle hepatitis C in poor countries
- Indian companies eyeing market for genotype 3 of hepatitis C
A scientist for Gilead Sciences works on a potential hepatitis C virus drug candidate.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Drugmakers in India are hard at work engineering hepatitis C combination pills impossible in western nations due to patent protections.
New antiviral medications from Gilead Sciences Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. have transformed the way hepatitis C is treated, making it a curable disease. Treatment regimens combining Bristol-Myers’ Daklinza with Gilead’s Sovaldi were approved by European authorities as effective against most strains of the hepatitis C virus, but a combination pill can’t be manufactured because the two companies haven’t collaborated on making one.