Fresh off the high of its Nas­daq IPO de­but, and the low of com­par­isons to Cymabay — whose NASH drug re­cent­ly stum­bled — Gen­fit on Mon­day un­veiled an up to $228 mil­lion deal with transpa­cif­ic biotech Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to de­vel­op its flag­ship ex­per­i­men­tal liv­er drug — elafi­bra­nor — in Greater Chi­na.

The deal comes weeks af­ter Gen­fit $GN­FT is­sued a fiery de­fense of its dual PPAR ag­o­nist elafi­bra­nor, when com­peti­tor Cymabay’s PPARδ ag­o­nist, se­ladel­par, fiz­zled in a snap­shot of da­ta from an on­go­ing mid-stage tri­al. The main goal at the end of 12 weeks was for se­ladel­par to in­duce a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in liv­er fat con­tent, but da­ta showed that pa­tients on the place­bo ac­tu­al­ly per­formed bet­ter.

The two treat­ments be­long to a fam­i­ly of drugs that ac­ti­vate pro­teins called per­ox­i­some pro­lif­er­a­tor-ac­ti­vat­ed re­cep­tors (PPARs), which reg­u­late gene ex­pres­sion. Ex­ist­ing ev­i­dence sug­gests that in the liv­er, PPAR ag­o­nists play a role in bile acid syn­the­sis, in­flam­ma­tion, fi­bro­sis and lipid me­tab­o­lism.

NASH is an un­treat­ed fat­ty liv­er dis­ease that has rav­aged the de­vel­oped world, cre­at­ing a lu­cra­tive tar­get that has sparked a flur­ry of drug de­vel­op­ment from bio­phar­ma firms big and small. It is char­ac­ter­ized by a buildup of ex­cess fat in the liv­er that in­duces chron­ic in­flam­ma­tion and even­tu­al­ly cul­mi­nates in scar­ring that can lead to cir­rho­sis, liv­er fail­ure, can­cer and death.

Pas­cal Pri­gen LinkedIn

Dubbed the silent dis­ease, it is hard to di­ag­nose in the ear­ly stages, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to es­ti­mate its preva­lence, but stud­ies show that it af­flicts up to 12% of the adult pop­u­la­tion in de­vel­oped coun­tries. Al­though there are no ap­proved drugs for the dis­ease, the size of the NASH mar­ket is ex­pect­ed to cross $20 bil­lion by 2025.

While oth­er ma­jor NASH con­tenders — Gilead $GILD (fail in Phase III) and In­ter­cept $ICPT (mixed win in Phase III) — have dis­closed the top-line num­bers of their late-stage tri­als, Gen­fit is ex­pect­ed to come out with its Phase III in­ter­im re­sults by the end of 2019, or ear­ly 2020.

Late-stage da­ta on In­ter­cept’s drug — obeti­cholic acid (OCA) — showed it in­duced a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in fi­bro­sis, but not NASH res­o­lu­tion, and a high­er-than-ex­pect­ed num­ber of pa­tients dropped out due to the pesky side-ef­fect of itch­ing. In con­trast to In­ter­cept, Gen­fit has em­pha­sized that elafi­bra­nor’s po­ten­tial in NASH res­o­lu­tion and re­duc­ing CV risk along with a be­nign safe­ty and tol­er­a­bil­i­ty pro­file have set it apart.

“We think we’re go­ing to be the first drug on the mar­ket that can re­solve NASH,” Gen­fit’s COO Dean Hum stressed in an in­ter­view with End­points News.

He sug­gest­ed that Cymabay had “made a mis­take” to fo­cus on liv­er fat, when they should have con­cen­trat­ed on in­flam­ma­tion and fi­bro­sis — the fac­tors that con­sti­tute NASH res­o­lu­tion.

But some an­a­lysts are not quite as con­vinced.

In the af­ter­math of the Cymabay da­ta, Baird’s Bri­an Sko­r­ney sug­gest­ed se­ladel­par and elafi­bra­nor are be­gin­ning to ap­pear more sim­i­lar than dif­fer­ent.

“Though the two med­ica­tions were thought to have dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed mech­a­nisms of ac­tion, it seems that this may not be the case, as se­ladel­par’s da­ta sug­gest that the med­ica­tion does not re­duce liv­er fat, which is sim­i­lar to what we have seen from ear­li­er tri­als of elafi­bra­nor. This leads us to be­lieve that these two PPARs look much more sim­i­lar than dif­fer­ent. Hence, CymaBay may be at a sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage mov­ing for­ward as we be­lieve that even if PPAR ag­o­nism is suc­cess­ful in Gen­fit‘s Phase 3 tri­al, with­out any clear signs of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, CymaBay may have an up­hill bat­tle as they work to catch up to Gen­fit in NASH. If elafi­bra­nor fails in NASH, it would prob­a­bly be pre­dic­tive of the out­come of se­ladel­par in NASH. Ei­ther way, we think this makes the PPAR class, as a whole, look like a less sig­nif­i­cant com­pet­i­tive threat to OCA.”

While the bulk of obe­si­ty and re­lat­ed dis­eases have tra­di­tion­al­ly been the wheel­house of the West­ern world, rapid ur­ban­iza­tion in parts of Asia has nor­mal­ized seden­tary lifestyles and over­nu­tri­tion, set­ting the stage for obe­si­ty in epi­dem­ic pro­por­tions. A study pub­lished in 2017 sug­gests the in­ci­dence of obe­si­ty has been in­creas­ing at an alarm­ing rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Chi­na, Japan and In­dia. “The num­ber of obese Chi­nese peo­ple was be­low 0.1 mil­lion in 1975, ris­ing to 43.2 mil­lion in 2014 and ac­count­ing for 16.3% of glob­al obe­si­ty,” re­searchers found.

Gen­fit’s new part­ner Terns is well versed in NASH. Last year, it joined forces with Eli Lil­ly to de­vel­op the US drug­mak­er’s ear­ly-stage NASH as­sets, in ad­di­tion to its own.

Un­der the deal, Terns — which has op­er­a­tions in Cal­i­for­nia, as well as a set­up in Chi­na — will hand over $35 mil­lion up­front, in ad­di­tion to up to $193 mil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stone pay­ments to de­vel­op Gen­fit’s late-stage as­set elafi­bra­nor for use in NASH and pri­ma­ry bil­iary cholan­gi­tis (PBC).

A key rea­son be­hind the deal was that since elafi­bra­nor’s ex­ist­ing late-stage study does not in­clude Chi­nese pa­tients, an­oth­er Phase III study in­clud­ing such pa­tients would be re­quired for Chi­nese ap­proval, Pas­cal Pri­gent, Gen­fit’s ex­ec­u­tive VP of mar­ket­ing and com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment, told End­points News.

Takeda has been burdened under mountains of debt since acquiring Shire for $62 billion 18 months ago, but one of the company’s biggest moves yet to relieve the stress could be on the horizon.

The Japanese pharma is preparing a bidding war for its $3.7 billion over-the-counter subsidiary, a sale that would dwarf previous spinoffs. Any transaction would be the latest in what’s been a long string of sell-offs, as Takeda marches unflinchingly toward its ultimate goal of shedding $10 billion in assets.

Investors, it seems, are willing to give Unum Therapeutics one last shot — or at least one last shot to a company of that name.

The ailing cancer biotech, beset by a series of clinical holds and multiple failed lead programs, announced today that they’ve acquired Kiq LLC and that investors are putting in $104 million to advance Kiq’s pipeline of kinase inhibitors. Unum shareholders will now own only 16.2% of the company and CEO Chuck Wilson indicated that the cell therapies the biotech has worked on since its founding may be on their way out, saying Unum will “explore strategic options” for those products.

Seven years after Pfizer first invested in Mission Therapeutics, a biotech that researches selectively inhibiting deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs), the pharma giant is re-upping its commitment to the company in another sign of confidence in the field of protein degradation.

Pfizer’s VC arm is heading up a $15 million round, announced Monday morning, and increasing its overall stake in Mission. Pfizer is also entering into a licensing agreement that would give it first dibs at negotiating exclusivity after accessing certain DUB inhibitors and screening them for their potential as drugs.