On Friday, Conatus Pharmaceuticals (CNAT) presented two posters at the European Association for the Study of the Liver — EASL — conference. This conference took place at Amsterdam, and it is where all biotech companies developing drugs for liver disease go to present. The two posters presented came from a data analysis done by W. Ray Kim. M.D., professor of Medicine, and the lead author of the posters Ajitha Mannalithara, P.h.D, Engineering Research Associate. Both of whom worked at the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. 

The two poster presentations were entitled as follows: 

Poster #1 : Poster #FRI-485 entitled, “Model for end stage liver disease [MELD] score dynamics in NASH [nonalcoholic steatohepatitis] patients awaiting liver transplantation and waitlist outcomes

Poster #2: poster #FRI-486 entitled “Model for end stage liver disease score dynamics in patients awaiting liver transplantation and waitlist outcomes

Both of these posters had data analyzed by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. There were adults who were waiting on a transplant list on or after January 1, 2010. The second poster #486 dealt with patients with liver cirrhosis, hepatitis C, alcoholic liver disease etc.. The first poster #485 dealt with NASH cirrhosis patients.

What do both of these posters have to do with Conatus? It is quite simple really. In both of the posters patients who saw a decrease in MELD score by 2 points saw a 40% or better reduced rate of death/need for liver transplant. That exactly plays into Conatus because of prior results. In the ad hoc analysis by Conatus those liver cirrhosis patients that had a MELD score of > 15 after taking Emricasan  saw at least a -2.8 point reduction in MELD score. The translation here is that Conatus is set to start a phase 2b Liver Cirrhosis trial in the current Q2 2017. It will probably design its endpoint around this MELD score for a registration trial, but that will be revealed soon.