How Will Clinicians and Pharmacy Directors Respond to the Increasing Number of Treatment Options for Hepatitis C Virus?

— A Webinar from Decision Resources

Based on our Physician & Payer Forum report entitled Hepatitis C: Reimbursement and Uptake of Novel Antivirals Among Payers and Prescribers, Decision Resources is offering an exclusive webinar entitled How Will Clinicians and Pharmacy Directors Respond to the Increasing Number of Treatment Options for Hepatitis C Virus? Because this webinar will feature major report findings, it is ONLY available to purchasers of this report.

Please contact us to learn how you can purchase this Physician & Payer Forum report and attend the webinar.

The expected launch of Vertex Pharmaceuticals/Johnson & Johnson/Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma's telaprevir and Merck’s boceprevir in 2011 will shift the treatment strategies for hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 patients. These protease inhibitors, when added to currently used peg-IFN and ribavirin, significantly increase the efficacy of HCV therapy and are likely to decrease treatment duration in a large proportion of patients. However, these drugs also have suboptimal safety profiles and inconvenient administration schedules.

Multiple follow-on HCV-specific antivirals are expected to enter the market shortly after launch of telaprevir and boceprevir. The availability of HCV-specific antivirals from different classes will make possible a quadruple treatment regimen that combines two direct antivirals from different classes with peg-IFN, and ribavirin. The availability of multiple HCV-specific antivirals from different classes also creates an opportunity for the development of IFN-free treatment regimens. As the number of available treatment options increases, clinicians and pharmacy directors will have to make more decisions regarding the prescribing and reimbursement of HCV therapies.

This webinar, presented by Decision Resources Analyst Alexandra Makarova, M.D., Ph.D., will answer the following questions:

• To what extent and for what reasons are physicians delaying HCV treatment in newly diagnosed patients and what proportion of patients are delaying therapy until the launch of novel HCV therapies? What attributes of emerging HCV therapies have the most power to persuade clinicians to prescribe a new treatment in place of current therapies? What factors will have the greatest impact on pharmacy directors’ formulary assessment of novel agents?
• How will physicians use telaprevir and boceprevir and will physicians delay treatment with these two agents in anticipation of follow-on HCV-specific antivirals? What is the relationship between the price point of novel antivirals and tier placement and what usage restrictions will exist?
• What improvements do clinicians expect from follow-on HCV-specific antiviral agents and what improvements do pharmacy directors expect from these agents in order to add them to their formularies?
• Will physicians use novel triple-therapy regimens in patients who fail treatment with other triple-therapy regimens and, if so, what data will convince clinicians to do so? How willing are clinicians to combine novel anti-HCV agents with each other and with peg-IFN/ribavirin to form triple and quadruple therapy regimens? What data will physicians require before incorporating quadruple therapy regimens into their treatment practices? How willing are pharmacy directors to reimburse multiple lines of therapy and four-drug combinations?
• What is physician opinion about potential fixed-dose combinations of HCV-specific antivirals and acceptable efficacy of all-oral HCV treatment regimens? Will pharmacy directors reimburse fixed-dose oral combinations of HCV therapies?

Dr. Makarova will conduct a live Q & A session after the presentation.

Registration

How Will Clinicians and Pharmacy Directors Respond to the Increasing Number of Treatment Options for Hepatitis C Virus?

July 28, 2010 at 10 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, 4 p.m. Central European Time (Paris).

To learn how you can purchase this Physician & Payer Forum report and attend the webinar, please contact us using the information below.

Contact Us

In North America — Keith Rourke at 781-296-2656 or krourke@dresources.com

In Europe — Kaj van Langendonck at +32-2-357-06-14 or kvanlangendonck@decisionresources.be

In Japan — Makiko Yoshimoto at +81-3-5401-2615 or makiko@dresources.jp

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