Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Shares Rebound On Positive Development

The shares of Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Inc.(NASDAQ:ACHN) jumped as much as 15% earlier in the session after the company announced its HCV-1 regimen achieves 100% SVR12 at six weeks. The stock closed up 7.76% to $11.66, paring more than half of its intra day rally from a session high of $12.85. Today’s bounce came after a 30% fall in the price over the past one week.

All of the patients in a 12-subject Phase 2 trial evaluating Achillion's ACH-3102 (50 mg) plus Gilead's (NASDAQ:GILD) Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) (400 mg) in treatment-naive HCV-1 patients achieved sustained viral response for 12 weeks (SVR12) after the completion of six weeks of therapy. The results included patients with high baseline viral load.

Mean baseline viral load was 10M (7 log10) IU/ml, range 2M (6.23 log10) - 97M (7.99 log10) IU/ml, including seven patients with baseline HCV RNA viral load exceeding 6M (6.78 log10) IU/ml. Seven patients were genotype 1a and 5 were genotype 1b. 100% of patients (12/12) also achieved SVR24.

Achillion CMO Dr. David Apelian says,

"The achievement of 100% SVR12 after six weeks of treatment with a dual NS5A-nucleotide regimen, even in patients with high baseline viral load who would otherwise require extended duration treatments, supports out belief that ACH-3102 can unleash the potential of this combination to drive down treatment duration. We are currently preparing to initiate our SPARTA Phase 2 program which evaluates short treatment durations with our proprietary once-daily regimens of ACH-3102 and ACH-3422, with or without sofosbuvir, for treatment-naive genotype 1 HCV patients. In parallel, we plan on exploring sofosbuvir-sparing regimens that will leverage shorter durations of sofosbuvir in combination with ACH-3102 and sovaprevir as part of our global development program."