Conatus Pharmaceuticals Surges 25% Following Positive Results In Phase 2 Study

Shares of Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: CNAT), a small-cap biopharmaceutical company focused on developing medicines to treat liver diseases, were trading higher by 25 percent at $3.61 early Wednesday morning.

Conatus Pharmaceuticals announced after Tuesday's market close that a three-month, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 clinical trial involving Liver Cirrhosis.

Conatus Pharmaceuticals stated the trial "showed a statistically significant reduction in caspase-cleaved cytokeratin 18 (cCK18) vs. placebo (p=0.04) in the overall patient population when adjusted for differences between treatment and placebo groups in baseline Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD)1 score and disease etiology as specified in the trial statistical analysis plan."

Conatus Pharmaceuticals added that the "consistent pattern of improvement across these biomarkers in the overall patient population provides strong evidence of a favorable treatment effect with emricasan, the company's first-in-class, orally-active pan-caspase inhibitor."

"With these latest results, we have now demonstrated emricasan's ability to cause meaningful improvements in targeted patient populations using all three measures identified by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) as potentially acceptable surrogate endpoints for clinical trials in patients with liver cirrhosis," said Conatus co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer Steven J. Mento, Ph.D.

"The evidence of emricasan's clinical activity across the spectrum of liver disease continues to build. Over the past year, we have generated clinical data defining acceptable emricasan dosing in patients with all levels of liver function impairment, and confirming that emricasan is active across multiple etiologies of liver disease. The two latest clinical trials demonstrate emricasan's ability to provide statistically significant improvements rapidly in clinically important validated surrogate endpoints of portal hypertension and liver function in the subgroups of patients with highest medical need."