The NASH par­ty is over at No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus. And this time they’re turn­ing off the lights.

More than 2 years af­ter No­var­tis sur­prised the biotech in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty with its $50 mil­lion up­front and promise of R&D sup­port to part­ner with the lit­tle biotech on NASH — ig­nit­ing a light­ning strike for the share price — Cona­tus $CNAT is back with the lat­est bit­ter tale to tell about em­ri­c­as­an, which once in­spired con­fi­dence at the phar­ma gi­ant.

Steven Men­to Cona­tus

Not on­ly did the topline re­sults for the EN­CORE-LF Phase IIb clin­i­cal tri­al fail to reach sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance, the ex­ten­sion study of the EN­CORE-PH study al­so flopped. EN­CORE-LF is now be­ing wrapped up.

This is Cona­tus’ fourth strike, fol­low­ing a se­ries of set­backs that elim­i­nat­ed any se­ri­ous hope in its fu­ture. The com­pa­ny is now lay­ing off 40% of its staff. And in an SEC fil­ing, the biotech not­ed that it will now search out its “strate­gic al­ter­na­tives,” which are se­vere­ly lim­it­ed.

The biotech stood up and took the bul­let, read­ing the last rites for this one: “Cona­tus will con­tin­ue to work with its part­ner No­var­tis on en­sur­ing that all re­main­ing oblig­a­tions re­lat­ed to the em­ri­c­as­an pro­gram are ful­filled.”

“We de­signed the EN­CORE pro­gram to give em­ri­c­as­an an op­por­tu­ni­ty to achieve its po­ten­tial through a se­ries of clin­i­cal tri­als tai­lored to spe­cif­ic pa­tient pop­u­la­tions en­com­pass­ing a broad range of chron­ic liv­er dis­ease,” said a straight­for­ward Steven Men­to, CEO and co-founder of Cona­tus, in a state­ment. “We are dis­ap­point­ed that em­ri­c­as­an failed to meet the ex­pec­ta­tions es­tab­lished in pri­or pre­clin­i­cal and clin­i­cal stud­ies, but con­fi­dent that the EN­CORE tri­als pro­vid­ed a fair eval­u­a­tion of em­ri­c­as­an’s lack of ef­fi­ca­cy in these pa­tient pop­u­la­tions.”

Back in late 2016, though, it was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry as No­var­tis shocked the mar­ket by pro­vid­ing an up­front that equaled Cona­tus’ mar­ket cap at the time. It’s in much worse shape now, with its pen­ny stock slashed more than 60% af­ter the mar­ket closed, drop­ping be­low the 40 cent mark in ex­tinc­tion ter­ri­to­ry.

NASH has proven to be a grave­yard for a num­ber of small and not-so-small biotechs. But with a mar­ket pro­ject­ed to reach the tens of bil­lions of dol­lars, the hunt con­tin­ues.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

David Livingston, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Med scientist who helped shine a light on some of the key molecular drivers of breast and ovarian cancer, died unexpectedly last Sunday.

One of the senior leaders at Dana-Farber during his nearly half century of work there, Livingston was credited with shedding light on the genes that regulate cell growth, with insights into inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that helped lay the scientific foundation for targeted therapies and earlier detection that have transformed the field.

Three Senate Democrats are backing an FDA plan to require mandatory prescriber education for opioids as overdose deaths have risen sharply over the past decade, with almost 97,000 American opioid-related overdose deaths in the past year alone.

While acknowledging a decline in overall opioid analgesic dispensing in recent years, the FDA said it’s reconsidering the need for mandatory prescriber training through a REMS given the current situation with overdoses, and is seeking input on the aspects of the opioid crisis that mandatory training could potentially mitigate.