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Sales Down, Discounts Up: Hepatitis C Market Feeling Zepatier Launch

 
• By Joseph Haas

As the third to market, Merck & Co. Inc.'s recently launched Zepatier brought in a modest $50m in sales during the first quarter – but the drug has had an outsized impact on the hepatitis C field, with competitors Gilead Sciences Inc. and AbbVie Inc. both citing the new competition among the reasons for their declining HCV product sales during the first quarter.

While Zepatier – a combination of the protease inhibitor grazoprevir and NS5A inhibitor elbasvir, approved by FDA and launched in January – may not represent a great threat to Gilead's Harvoni (sofosbuvir/ledipasvir) and AbbVie's Viekira Pak (ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir/dasabuvir) on its own merits, the impact of a third and clearly cheaper regimen is weighing on both companies, especially with changes coming to the US HCV market. Access is being broadened to less-sick patients, which means more patients but shorter durations of therapy, as well as to VA and Medicaid patients, where steep discounts come into play.

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