Conatus Pharmaceuticals Announces Top-line Results from Phase 2b POLT-HCV-SVR Clinical Trial

Conatus Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:CNAT), a biotechnology company focused on the development of novel medicines to treat liver disease, today announced top-line results from the company’s exploratory Phase 2b POLT-HCV-SVR proof-of-concept clinical trial in liver transplant patients with fibrosis or cirrhosis. Although the trial did not meet its primary endpoint in the heterogeneous overall trial population, the emricasan treatment effect in the subgroup of patients where the histology endpoint is most relevant, patients with advanced fibrosis and early cirrhosis, supports further evaluation.

As quoted in the press release:

Patients were stable transplant recipients who were an average of seven years post-transplant on chronic immunosuppression. Hepatitis C virus (HCV), the initial cause of the inflammatory insult to the transplanted liver, was eliminated by antiviral therapies prior to the study.

This is the first demonstration of the anti-fibrotic efficacy with emricasan using a histology endpoint in patients with fibrosis. Consistent with the previous 16 clinical trials, emricasan was generally well-tolerated in the POLT-HCV-SVR clinical trial, and the overall safety profile was similar in the emricasan and placebo groups.

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