Hepion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:HEPA) made somewhat grudging headway Monday on new events surrounding its product.
The Edison, New Jersey-based Hepion, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on Artificial Intelligence (“AI”)-driven therapeutic drug development for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (“NASH”) and liver disease, today announced additional efficacy data from its Phase 2a AMBITION clinical trial.
AMBITION, a multi-center, randomized, placebo controlled, single-blind Phase 2a trial, enrolled 43 NASH patients. The trial was designed to investigate once daily oral administration of CRV431 at doses of 75 mg (n=12) and 225 mg (n=17) administered as soft gelatin capsules to presumed F2 and F3 NASH subjects for 28 days, followed by a 14-day observation period for safety.
As previously reported , all primary endpoints of the AMBITION NASH trial (safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics) were met.
Today, Hepion reports additional data on biomarkers, alanine aminotransferase (“ALT”) and N-terminal type III collagen pro-peptide (“Pro-C3”), as well as advanced pharmacologic and bioinformatic analyses that indicate CRV431 efficacy in treating NASH patients.
Once-daily 225 mg dosing of CRV431 decreased mean Pro-C3 levels by 7.9% (-2.1 ng/ml) and 22.4% (-11.6 ng/ml) at days 28 and 42, respectively, in subjects stratified for baseline Pro-C3 levels greater than 17.5 ng/mL (n=7). Pro-C3 levels greater than 15-20 ng/ml are generally accepted to represent active NASH disease activity and the primary patient population for treatment by many NASH drug candidates.
In contrast to the 225 mg CRV431 cohort, placebo treatment similarly stratified by baseline Pro-C3 greater than 17.5 ng/mL (n=9) resulted in a mean increase of 3.5% (0.7 ng/ml) and a mean decrease of 4.7% (-1.6 ng/ml) at days 28 and 42, respectively.
HEPA shares gathered two cents, or 1.1%, to $1.68.
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