Vertex Hep C Drug Still Leads Schering

Competing hepatitis C drugs from Vertex Pharmaceuticals(VRTX Quote) and Schering-Plough(SGP Quote) went "Mano-a-Mano in Milano" this weekend at a European liver disease meeting, and it was really no contest.

Victory Vertex.

Credit Sanford Bernstein biotech analyst Geoffrey Porges for the catchy "mano" line. The subhead of his Sunday night research note wasn't as cheeky, but should resonate just as much with investors Monday:

"Schering-Plough's Boceprevir Still Behind, Still Inferior to Telaprevir."

Telaprevir is Vertex's hepatitis C drug, which had a pretty good weekend at the European Association for the Study of Liver Disease annual meeting in Milan, Italy. On Thursday, telaprevir proved very capable of reducing the viral load of hepatitis C patients who had failed prior treatments. Then in a highly anticipated presentation Saturday, Schering-Plough's boceprevir couldn't match the "cure rate" standard for newly diagnosed hep C patients set earlier by Vertex's telaprevir.

Neither drug is approved yet, of course, and there isn't any real head-to-head data, so don't put any conclusions in ink just yet. With that said, however, the emerging story line from this weekend's meeting is that telaprevir and boceprevir are still No. 1 and No. 2 respectively, but the gap between the two drugs has widened.

Vertex shares closed Friday at $25.72, while Schering-Plough closed at $18.64.

In a phase II study of treatment-naïve hepatitis C patients, Schering's boceprevir achieved a sustained virologic response, or cure rate, after 12 weeks of 57% and 55% in two arms of a multi-arm phase II study that's still underway. Another 12 weeks of observation (for a full 24 weeks) will be required to determine the final cure rate for these patients.