Yes, the press release was pointed to by smith21347 yesterday
http://www.vrtx.com/Pressreleases2006/pr121306.html
and there were some hints in their presentations at the AASLD Boston
convention in November. I didn't want to say anything lest be accused
of....something or another ;-) but now that you've let the cat out o' the
bag....

All study arms are populated with g-1 patients, without regard to viral load
at onset of therapy, weight, or race/ethnicity. That's goodness - raises the
likelihood they didn't cherry-pick the cohort. All arms are using Pegasys and
Copegus (I think PegIntron would probably have an even higher success rate,
but Vertex is working with Roche and not Schering). The VX950 arms got a fixed
dose three times per day along with the standard doses of Peg and Riba.

The down-side of the results so far in this Phase 2b study is the control
group (IFN + Riba, no VX950) had a 3% drop-out rate while the arms with VX950
combined to a 9% drop-out rate, "due to rash, gastrointestinal disorders, and
anemia".

Very much on the up side, however, to this point the VX950 arms are sporting
an 88% early response rate - 65 of 74 patients were *undetectable* (below 10
IU/ml) at week 12, compared to 52% for the control arms.

That's a huge improvement, and if a similar advance is demonstrated in the SVR
rates as the study runs its course, I can see this drug being rolled out early
in 2008.

Cheers - and keep the faith!

/greyhackles