Enan­ta's NASH drug bare­ly meets main goal in mid-stage study

A pla­toon of drug de­vel­op­ers big and small has long been work­ing on com­bat­ing NASH, a fat­ty liv­er dis­ease that has rav­aged the de­vel­oped world. On Wednes­day, Enan­ta Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals un­veiled da­ta from a short mid-stage study which sug­gest­ed its liv­er drug had — by a mi­nus­cule mar­gin — met the main goal in NASH pa­tients.

The drug, EDP-305, is a Far­ne­soid X Re­cep­tor (FXR) ag­o­nist, akin to In­ter­cept’s $ICPT obeti­cholic acid, which pro­duced mixed da­ta in a land­mark phase III study. FXR is a nu­clear re­cep­tor and a  cru­cial reg­u­la­tor of bile acid lev­els in the liv­er and small in­tes­tine.

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