I agree with you Tig - here's a tidbit I did not post earleir (kinda dry for most I think ), but .... now that we are on the subject of markets again ... 

 Oct 5, 2017 - Maelstrom (Link) ... The Hepatitis Drug Market Is Worse Than Wall Street Realizes

(graphs will not open below)

From www.bloomberg.com - October 5, 6:28 AM

Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. Inc. have both recently halted development of drugs to treat hepatitis C (HCV), with no plans to work on any others. This capitulation leaves the market largely split between Gilead Sciences Inc., AbbVie Inc., and a drug Merck already has on the market. 

This is a smart retreat for Merck and J&J. The HCV market is well past its peak. Both of their new therapies would have been very late; AbbVie and Gilead both had new drugs approved this year. Their best hope likely would have been to compete on price in a market that's been warring over price for a while.

And the market is continually shrinking -- existing medicines have already cured many people. That's good news for patients but not an especially appealing prospect for drugmakers looking to invest in new treatments.

It's telling that J&J and Merck both retreated after the FDA approved AbbVie's new HCV medicine Mavyret in early August. The drug is particularly effective -- it works in all genetic subtypes of the disease and can cure many people more quickly than most other drugs. It's also cheaper than competing therapies. J&J and Merck may have realized they couldn't keep up with it on price. Insurers will likely use Mavyret's low cost to wring discounts from competitors.

But Wall Street analysts continue to underestimate the drug's impact. Their 2020 sales estimates for Gilead and Merck's HCV drugs have barely budged since its approval. They expect only modest sales for Mavyret, while forecasting continued dominance for Gilead and a profitable niche for Merck's Zepatier. 

IntellaTurn's insight:

The number of new HCV drug patients in the U.S. this year may fall as much as 35 percent from 2016, Gilead has estimated. That decline is not reversible. HCV is a slow-moving disease; the sickest patients have already been treated, and healthier ones are more likely to hold off on getting these expensive medicines. 

Further to the very recent announcement (September 2017) that Merck IS dropping further phase 3 trials/development of their triple uprif/grazo/ruz, it's just weird, in that, just only this spring, there was no "wind" of this happening!

Below is a press release from Merck earlier in 2017, as recent as (April 2017), and yet (now) Merck has gone completely silent on the matter of all this former/prior phase 1 and 2 hard work (multiple trials, Crest and C-Surge NCT 02332720 and NCT 02613403 respectively) researching this potentially good uprif (their new NS5B!)/grazo/ruz triple. Dropped like a hot potato it would seem!

Merck is currently off to the annual Washington "The Liver Meeting" (that is occurring right now in (October 2017), and they are only going to be presenting info on their stellar "Zepatier"? Why?

Just odd ... both Merck and Janssen developed their own "new" NS5B's for their triples (just ignore, if you can, the possible merits of their triples, or, the possible merits of any of their other individual drugs in their triple trials for a moment), to me, alone, any "new" effective NS5B is big news!, as it competes with Gilead's NS5B SOF - all that new Merck and Janssen 5B R&D just dropped??, coincidental? that both these companies new 5B's have been shoved unused to the back of the shelf, in the same breath that Gilead was successful in renewing/extending their SOF patents to 2029?? About Access to Sofa 

Not understanding leads me to negative speculation - just pondering, out loud.

(Press release from Merck -  April 2017)

Merck Announces New Phase 2 Data on Investigational Triple Combination Therapy MK-3682B for Chronic Hepatitis C

APRIL 22, 2017

Findings Presented at The International Liver Congress 2017 (TM) Show High Rates of Sustained Virologic Response (SVR12) in Genotype 1 Patients for Whom Direct-Acting Antiviral Therapy Had Previously Failed

KENILWORTH, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, today announced the first sustained virologic response¹ (SVR) results 12 weeks after completion of therapy (SVR12, considered virologic cure) from C-SURGE, an ongoing, open label Phase 2 clinical trial evaluating MK-3682B [uprifosbuvir (MK-3682)²/grazoprevir³/rusazvir⁴], the company's investigational triple-combination therapy in treatment-experienced patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype (GT) 1 infection for whom treatment with approved direct-acting antiviral regimens had failed. The study showed that 100 percent (43/43) of patients who completed 16 weeks of treatment plus ribavirin (RBV) achieved SVR12 and 100 percent (49/49) of patients who completed 24 weeks of treatment achieved SVR12 (abstract PS-159). These results will be presented today at The International Liver Congress 2017.

"Despite the significant progress made to address the worldwide epidemic of chronic hepatitis C infection, there remains a need for additional treatment options," said Dr. Heiner Wedemeyer, lead study investigator and research group leader in the department of gastroenterology, hepatology and endocrinology at Hannover Medical School, Germany. "We are encouraged by the high virologic cure rates in the difficult-to-treat patients observed in the C-SURGE study and look forward to further evaluation of this investigational triple-combination therapy."

The Phase 2 C-SURGE study enrolled 94 patients who were randomized to receive a once-daily regimen of MK-3682B for either 16 weeks with RBV (n=45) or 24 weeks without RBV (n=49); one patient in the 16-week arm withdrew prior to starting treatment. Of the 93 patients who received treatment (full analysis set), 57 had previously received a regimen of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir (LDV/SOF) for 12 to 24 weeks, 14 had previously received LDV/SOF for 8 weeks and 22 had previously received ZEPATIER^® (elbasvir and grazoprevir) for 12 weeks. Seventy-eight patients who received treatment had at least one baseline NS5A resistance-associated substitution (RAS) at positions 28, 30, 31 or 93. Eighty patients who received treatment in C-SURGE had GT1a infection, and 40 patients had compensated cirrhosis. In the full analysis set, 98 percent of patients who received MK-3682B for 16 weeks with RBV (43/44) and 100 percent of patients who received MK-3682B for 24 weeks without RBV (49/49) achieved SVR12.

Results from the modified full analysis set, which excludes one patient in the 16-week arm who withdrew after three doses of treatment, show that 100 percent of patients receiving treatment with MK-3682B for 16 weeks with RBV (43/43) and 100 percent of patients receiving treatment with MK-3682B for 24 weeks without RBV (49/49) achieved SVR12.

Across the combined treatment arms, the most common adverse events (AEs) reported in the full analysis set were fatigue (35%), headache (13%), diarrhea (9%), rash (9%) and pruritus (5%). There were no drug-related serious AEs, and no patients discontinued treatment due to a drug-related AE.

SVR8 results from the C-SURGE study were previously presented at The Liver Meeting^® 2016. 

About MK-3682B

MK-3682B is Merck's investigational triple-combination therapy in Phase 2 development for the treatment of chronic HCV infection. MK-3682B combines an HCV nucleotide analogue NS5B polymerase inhibitor (uprifosbuvir, MK-3682), an HCV NS3/4A protease inhibitor (grazoprevir, MK-5172) and an HCV NS5A inhibitor (ruzasvir, MK-8408).