LONDON – Northsea Therapeutics BV has closed a $40 million series B, providing the means to complete the ongoing U.S. phase IIb trial of its lead product for treating nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and to launch clinical trials of two more products.
An aspect of artificial intelligence (AI) that’s often misunderstood is its power, something Deep Genomics Inc.’s founder and CEO, Brendan Frey, does his best to clarify for collaborators and his employees. “One problem of AI is thinking of it as a magic black box that can solve any issue,” Frey told BioWorld soon after the company announced a $40 million series B financing. “If you take that approach, it won’t help.”
PERTH, Australia – Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH is discontinuing development of BI-1467335 for the treatment of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that it acquired from Sydney-based Pharmaxis Ltd. in 2015.
Due to the “dynamic nature of the situation,” officials of Cymabay Therapeutics Inc. declined to comment on the stoppage of work with PPAR-delta agonist seladelpar, but in a press release they pointed to “a series of investigative actions [that have begun in order] to better understand these findings.”
BOSTON – Researchers presented data at The Liver Meeting 2019 and in Nature this week demonstrating that bacteriophages targeted to specific members of the microbiome could be useful in fighting two different liver diseases.
BOSTON – In a late-breaking oral presentation on the last day of The Liver Meeting 2019, Durect Corp. reported results from its phase IIa trial of DUR-928 for the treatment of alcoholic hepatitis. All 19 patients enrolled in the study survived for 28 days after treatment with DUR-928 , and all but two responded to the drug as measured by Lille scores, which is used for predicting risk of death.
BOSTON – For diagnosing nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), liver biopsy is "the reference standard," Dean Hum, president of Genfit Corp., told BioWorld. "I'm not going to call it the gold standard." Some of the reasons for denying biopsies a gold sticker are obvious. Biopsies are invasive, which makes them risky, expensive and loathed by patients and doctors alike. "In the real world, doctors don't always do biopsies – many say they very rarely do biopsies unless other data points in several directions and they need that for clarity," Gail Cawkwell told BioWorld.
It's been a busy September for Ardelyx Inc. so far. Less than two weeks after the Fremont, Calif-based company reported promising pivotal data for tenapanor in chronic kidney disease patients with hyperphosphatemia, the sodium hydrogen exchanger 2 (NHE3) inhibitor won FDA approval for use in irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C).
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.
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