Janssen Pharmaceuticals has signed a collaboration agreement with the National Taiwan University (NTU) and the university’s hospital (NTUH) to cooperate on developing new drugs for treating hepatitis B. Despite the high success rate of viral suppression achieved by existing medications, the virus is currently incurable.
Chen Ding-shinn (陳定信), chair professor at National Taiwan University Medical College, said that there are more than 350 million people in the world infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV), 60 to 70 percent of which are in Asia.
Every year, more than 600 thousand people die as a result of complications such as liver cirrhosis and liver cancer caused by the virus.
“HBV can be transmitted prenatally [from mother to child] or by having contact with an infected person. While less than 3 percent of adults infected with the virus develop chronic hepatitis, more than 90 percent of infected newborns do,” Chen said. “Those who have chronic or persistent hepatitis B are at a high risk of developing liver cirrhosis or liver cancer later in life.”
There are about 2.4 million HBV carriers in Taiwan, Chen said, adding that statistics in 2011 showed that deaths attributable to liver cancer ranked No. 2 on the list of leading causes of death for men and women.
“Eighty percent to 90 percent of liver cancer patients had chronic hepatitis B,” he said.
“However, after Taiwan started vaccinating newborns against HBV in 1984, the number of yearly infections has decreased,” Chen said.
While the nation’s vaccination plan is an effective prevention measure, “having better control over the source of infection is still out of reach. Interferon, an approved medication for treating HBV infections is effective in only one-third of patients, while another treatment, nucleoside analogue therapy, inhibits viral replication without completely eliminating the virus.”
The collaboration is intended to develop a treatment to tackle the disease, Jansen, NTU and NTUH said in a joint statement.
Chen Pei-jer (陳培哲), a professor at the Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine in NTUH’s Medical College and the principal investigator of the collaboration, said the aim is to “accelerate the development of a new hepatitis B drug by combining the resources uniquely held by the respective partners.”
“NTU has been working in this research field for more than 50 years. NTU’s specialization and experience makes it peerless in the fields of drug research and development,” Chen Pei-jer said.
“Janssen has a large collection of compounds as drug candidates. They need a platform to see whether the candidates are safe and effective,” Chen Pei-jer added.
From the mouse model first established by the NTU research team for assaying anti-viral and immune-modulatory activity — an important indication of HBV eradication — and the woodchuck model, which demonstrates HBV activity most similar to that of human HBV, to recent clinical research, Taiwan has always been a leader in the field of HBV treatment, Chen Pei-jer said, adding that NTU’s research was “a complete line from bench to bedside and back.”
“We are aiming to take the lead in developing a new drug to fully eradicate HBV,” the lead investigator said.
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