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

Biohaven is at risk of making a habit of disappointing its investors. 

Late Friday the biotech $BHVN reported that the FDA had rejected its application for riluzole, an old drug that they had made over into a sublingual formulation that dissolves under the tongue. According to Biohaven, the FDA had a problem with the active ingredient used in a bioequivalence study back in 2017, which they got from the Canadian drugmaker Apotex.

Let the long battle for biosimilars in the cancer space begin.

Amgen has launched its Avastin and Herceptin copycats — licensed from the predecessors of Allergan — almost two years after the FDA had stamped its approval on Mvasi (bevacizumab-awwb) and three months after the Kanjinti OK (trastuzumab-anns). While the biotech had been fielding biosimilars in Europe, this marks their first foray in the US — and the first oncology biosimilars in the country.

→ On the same day it announced a $17.5 million Series C, life sciences and health data company Seer unveiled that it had lured former FDA commissioner and ex-CMS administrator Mark McClellan on to its board. “Mark’s deep understanding of the health care ecosystem and visionary insights on policy reform will be crucial in informing our thinking as we work to bring our liquid biopsy and life sciences products to market,” said Seer chief and founder Omid Farokhzad in a statement.

Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day’s new task hunting up a CSO for the company isn’t stopping the industry’s dominant antiviral player from doing pipeline deals.

The big biotech today snapped up 3 preclinical antiviral programs from pharma giant Novartis, with drugs promising to treat human rhinovirus, influenza and herpes viruses. We don’t know what the upfront is, but the back end has $291 million in milestones baked in.