For $3.85 billion, Merck & Co Inc is to acquire Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. It plans to combine both the companies’ most promising drugs to create a more effective and faster cure for hepatitis C.

Merck agreed to pay $24.50 a share for the company, which is more than three times Idenix’s Friday closing price of $7.23.

Roger Perlmutter, Merck’s research chief said that the payoff for Merck could come from a triple therapy that may cure patients with all strains or genotypes of the hepatitis C virus in as little as four to six weeks.

According to Perlmutter, an ideal therapy is something that works in every hepatitis C infected patient, irrespective of which genotype the virus is of. He further stated that their goal is to cure everyone quickly using an oral regimen.

The deal comes as both the drugmakers aim to better compete with Gilead Sciences Inc’s Sovaldi drug. Solvadi, which is an $84,000 treatment approved in December has generated an unprecedented $2.3 billion in sales in the first few months on the market.

The price of Sovaldi, which cures over 90 percent of patients in 8 weeks of treatment, has drawn sharp criticism from government officials and insurers.

To treat hepatitis C, Idenix has three drugs in development, the most notable of which is a pill in early-stage trials called IDX21437. Like Sovaldi, it is a “nuc” or nucleotide inhibitor that blocks a protein needed by the hepatitis C virus to replicate.

Merck hopes to combine IDX21437 with its two high-profile experimental oral treatments, a NS5A inhibitor called MK-8742 and a protease inhibitor called MK-5172.

In a recent mid-stage trial, Merck’s two-drug combo cured 98 percent of previously untreated patients with genotype 1. Genotype 1 is the most common variant of hepatitis C and the most difficult to treat.

In earlier studies, the Idenix drug has shown effectiveness against all six main genotypes of hepatitis C.  The drug was also devoid of any serious side effects that plagued other drugs in its class. Bristol Myers paid $2.5 billion for Inhibitex to get its nucleotide; however scrapped the drug in 2012 after serious side effects were seen in trials.

Drugs of hepatitis C have a history of being expensive because some 170 million people worldwide have the often-fatal liver disease and they have not had good treatment options.

Perlmutter said that Merck hopes the triple combination will cure patients in 4 to 6 weeks, considerably more quickly than current treatments as well as those in clinical trials.

Seamus Fernandez, analyst of Leerink Partners said that IDX21437 has not shown any of the cardiac or skeletal toxicity signals that were seen with Bristol’s failed drug. He added that at least from preclinical studies, safety of the Idenix drug looks very similar to Sovaldi.

Brian Skorney, analyst of Baird Equity Research said that Merck’s presentation supports a much longer and larger market opportunity in hepatitis C than expected, which fully justifies the price of the deal.

Merck and Idenix said that they expect the transaction to close in the third quarter.

On Monday, shares of Idenix fell 232 percent to $24.03, while Merck’s shares were down slightly.