Pharmaceutical giant GSK has announced that it has entered into an exclusive collaboration with the Hong Kong-based pharma company Sino Biopharmaceutical to sell in mainland China, a chronic hepatitis B drug which is still under review in many health jurisdictions.
China is a growing market for pharmaceutical products and with a third of the world’s hepatitis B cases (more than 70 million people are living with hepatitis B in China) there will potentially be a huge demand for bepirovirsen, the product in the agreement.
In January Community News reported on this potential hepatitis B cure, which GSK claimed was showing positive results in phase-III trials as a treatment for chronic hepatitis B. GSK claimed that bepirovirsen demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful functional cure rate for HBV, which would be a dramatic development. Frustratingly, the actual research data itself remains unreleased outside of broad details in media releases and PR articles.
GSK maintains that the full results of their research will be presented at the end of May at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) congress. In the meantime, bepirovirsen is being reviewed by regulatory bodies in under way in the EU, Japan and the US, and is currently being assessed by China’s National Medical Products Administration.
At the moment the available treatments for hepatitis B often require lifelong therapy and the functional cure rates remain low, with only a few percent of patients reaching this point.
Functional cure for chronic hepatitis B is defined as being when the virus can no longer be detected in the blood, as measured by the sustained loss of hepatitis B surface antigen (a viral protein that signals ongoing infection) and undetectable hepatitis B virus DNA for at least 24 weeks after a finite course of treatment finishes.
This allows the immune system to control the infection without further medication. Functional cure is associated with significant reduction in the risk of long-term liver complications, including liver cancer, as well as other associated health problems.
According to GSK, the functional cure from bepirovirsen was achieved in over 1,800 patients from 29 countries. We keenly await the release of the full data for more details.
Last updated 15 May 2026
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