Bristol-Myers said it will spend $2.5 billion to buy Inhibitex Inc., which is developing a next-generation hepatitis C treatment that will compete with two being developed by Vertex.
Gilead Sciences Inc., which agreed last fall to purchase Pharmasset Inc. for $11 billion, is also targeting that market.
“These deals tell us there’s a lot of demand and need in [hepatitis C], and we’re very well positioned,’’ said Jeffrey Leiden, who will take over Feb. 1 as Vertex’s chief executive. Leiden spoke to stock analysts and reporters yesterday after his kickoff presentation at the J.P. Morgan conference. The event drew nearly 400 companies and more than 8,000 executives.
Leiden told the audience that more than 25,000 patients in the United States have started taking Incivek - the first drug developed by Vertex - since it won Food and Drug Administration approval last spring.
The drug, which is used in combination with therapies already on the market, competes with another medicine approved around the same time from rival Merck & Co.
Those two drugs are protease inhibitors, which prevent replication of the potentially fatal virus; the next generation of hepatitis C drugs are in a different class called nucleotides, which don’t have to be combined with treatments that cause side effects for patients.
Vertex estimates that 170 million people worldwide have chronic hepatitis C, but many don’t know it. Only a small percentage of those with the disease have been treated.
Leiden said Vertex began selling Incivek within days after it was approved by the FDA in May, in what he called the fastest drug launch in the industry’s history.
But the company’s stock, which peaked at $58.87 in May, has slumped. It closed yesterday up 4.8 percent at $35.68, a gain of $1.65.
The company last year applied for US and European approval for a second drug, this one to treat cystic fibrosis.
It is also developing treatments for influenza, rheumatoid arthritis, and other conditions.
New competition from Bristol-Myers “reiterates the value of having multiple shots on goal,’’ said Matthew Emmens, Vertex’s outgoing chief executive.
