Days af­ter In­ter­cept re­jec­tion, Akero surges on ‘un­prece­dent­ed‘ NASH da­ta

A year and a half af­ter scor­ing a $70 mil­lion Se­ries B and a top Gilead ex­ec­u­tive as CEO, Akero Ther­a­peu­tics has an­nounced new da­ta on their NASH drug. And with the field still reel­ing from a sur­prise FDA re­jec­tion this week, the news was enough to send their stock surg­ing.

Akero had al­ready said in March that its lead drug had beat­en place­bo in its Phase II tri­al, re­duc­ing liv­er fat by 14% in the high­est dose group com­pared to 0.3% in place­bo, ac­cord­ing to MRI scans. But al­though NASH is an obe­si­ty-re­lat­ed con­di­tion and re­sults from fat­ty buildup in the liv­er, the re­al im­me­di­ate ques­tion for any ther­a­py is whether it can re­solve the fi­bro­sis and in­flam­ma­tion that re­sults from that buildup. Those da­ta re­quire biop­sy­ing the pa­tients, a longer and more in­va­sive process that was fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by a pan­dem­ic.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.