Josh Bloom in Medical Progress Today, Hepatitis C miracles courtesy of me-too drugs
If there is a perfect example of 1) state of the art pharmaceutical research, and 2) the importance of the so-called "me-too" drugs, it is the massive effort over the past two decades to find treatments for (and possibly eradicate) hepatitis C--a blood borne viral infection of the liver that has infected about 200 million people worldwide--four times the number of people infected by HIV.
The causative pathogen, hepatitis C virus (HCV) takes hold in the liver, where it relentlessly replicates, causing irreversible damage, often leading to cirrhosis and less frequently, liver cancer over the course of two to three decades. It is the leading cause of liver transplants in the U.S...[Read more].