Novartis licenses nonalcoholic steatohepatitis therapy from Conatus

Novartis has licensed a new treatment for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) from Conatus Pharmaceuticals.

The company has elected to exercise the option to an exclusive licence for the global development and commercialisation of emricasan, under the terms of a deal signed with Conatus in December 2016.

This follows the initiation of the phase IIb ENCORE-LF trial by Conatus, which aims to evaluate emricasan in patients with decompensated liver cirrhosis caused by NASH. This collaboration has the potential to offer a new therapy option for people in various stages of fatty liver disease.

Vas Narasimhan, global head of drug development and chief medical officer at Novartis, said: "We look forward to advancing our broad portfolio of NASH and chronic liver disease programmes to address this growing unmet need."

This comes as part of a broader research programme examining the effectiveness of farnesoid X receptor (FXR) agonists for the treatment of chronic liver diseases. As part of this collaboration, Conatus will conduct multiple phase IIb clinical trials with emricasan in NASH.

If results are positive, Novartis will go on to organise phase III studies of emricasan as a single treatment, as well as developing combination therapies with FXR agonists.

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