No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus high­lights a sil­ver lin­ing, but PhI­Ib NASH-re­lat­ed set­back caus­es whiplash in share price

The fairy tale sto­ry at Cona­tus Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has tak­en a nasty twist.

A lit­tle more than a year af­ter phar­ma gi­ant No­var­tis stepped in with an up­front pay­ment to bag li­cens­ing rights to its liv­er drug that was as big as the biotech’s mar­ket cap, their first Phase IIb tri­al for liv­er dis­ease failed the pri­ma­ry end­point. And their stock price $CNAT im­me­di­ate­ly tanked, plung­ing 34%.

There was vir­tu­al­ly no dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­sponse rate in the over­all pop­u­la­tion tak­ing em­ri­c­as­an com­pared to a place­bo. In­ves­ti­ga­tors, though, did find some en­cour­age­ment in sub­group analy­sis, not­ing some bet­ter num­bers for ad­vanced fi­bro­sis and ear­ly cir­rho­sis. But there were al­so sev­er­al miss­es as well.

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