Hepatitis B

AASLD Liver Meeting Starts this Weekend in Washington, DC

The American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) annual Liver Meeting gets underway this Friday, running November 1-5 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. The highlight of this year's meeting will be numerous presentations on next-generation direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) for hepatitis C, now in late stages of development, both as interferon add-ons and in interferon-free regimens.

The AASLD Liver Meeting each fall and the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) International Liver Congress each spring are the premier events for presentation of the latest data on treatment for hepatitis B and C.

This year's Liver Meeting promises to be particularly interesting given the race to complete testing of several DAAs that have so far demonstrated high cure rates, efficacy at short treatment durations, and good safety and tolerability. Last week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Antiviral Advisory Committee recommended approval of 2 next-generation DAAs, Janssen/Medivir's simeprevir and Gilead Sciences' sofosbuvir.

Several companies have already offered a preview of their AASLD presentations including:

• AbbVie (ABT-450, ABT-333, and ABT-267 combos)
• Boehringer-Ingelheim (faldaprevir and deleobuvir)
• Bristol-Myers Squibb (asunaprevir, daclatasvir, and BMS-791325)
• Gilead (sofosbuvir and ledipasvir) -- no preview yet
• Janssen R&D (simeprevir)
• Merck (MK-5172 and MK-8742)

The full AASLD program is available online.

HIVandHepatitis.com and our partners at Aidsmap.com will be reporting highlights from the conference starting next week. Follow us on Twitter @HIVandHepatitis and find conference updates using hashtag #Liver2013.

10/30/13