To­bi­ra crushed af­ter NASH drug flunks a PhI­Ib, but slice of da­ta dri­ves PhI­II plans

To­bi­ra Ther­a­peu­tics’ $TBRA lead drug ceni­crivi­roc flunked a Phase IIb study for NASH, but the South San Fran­cis­co-based biotech says it got enough pos­i­tive da­ta on a sec­ondary end­point to war­rant a move in­to a piv­otal Phase III pro­gram,.

To­bi­ra’s shares were crushed by the news, plung­ing 64% in pre­mar­ket trad­ing.

The pri­ma­ry end­point in the study, which reg­is­tered 289 pa­tients, was a drop in a score for dis­ease ac­tiv­i­ty in NASH, a fat­ty liv­er ail­ment that has been grow­ing at an epi­dem­ic pace around the world. On that point, the drug flopped. It al­so failed a sec­ondary end­point for com­plete res­o­lu­tion of steato­hep­ati­tis.

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