Hepatitis B drug developers chart slow progress forward, just like hep C before it

Lawrence Blatt, Ph.D., CEO of Aligos Therapeutics, knows a thing or two about the slow drip of progress that has defined treating viral liver infections. He was “thrilled” back in the mid-90s when a drug he co-invented at Amgen, Infergen, notched a 10% response rate in patients with hepatitis C. In 1998, ribavirin was approved as a first-line treatment, which, when combined with interferon, roughly tripled response rates.