BEIJING – Hightide Therapeutics Inc., of Shenzhen, China, and Rockville, Md., said it finished the enrollment in phase IIa trials for its lead asset, HTD-1801, which is a potential first-in-class new molecular entity for primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

South San Francisco-based Pliant Therapeutics Inc. CEO Bernard Coulie told BioWorld that Novartis AG was drawn to the $80 million deal in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) because other firms working in the integrin space "are very much focused on early stages of the disease, with what we call a metabolic approach. We are addressing with our compound, which is a pure antifibrotic, the late stage of the disease, [categorized as] F3 and F4, where most of the liver is already gone. We think that the real market will be there, because that's where health care costs go up" and where patients facing an increased mortality rate "need proper treatment rather than changing their lifestyle" while using something milder.

Altimmune Inc. will acquire Spitfire Pharma Inc. and its lead candidate, SP-1373 (to be renamed ALT-801), a GLP-1/glucagon receptor co-agonist for treating nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

Korea's largest pharmaceutical company, Yuhan Corp., and German giant Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (BI) have signed a collaboration and license agreement to develop a first-in-class dual agonist to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and related liver diseases, following a similar path trod by other companies.