EASL, the key European liver conference just wrapped up and there is a lot of encouraging news for liver patients. The conference highlighted a number of trials of promising drugs of interest to our community.  We are finally seeing the payoff of the very difficult research aimed at treating our conditions.  Rezdiffra was the first drug to treat NASH but it will not be alone in the space for long.

Much of the interest focused on the GLP-1 landscape with NOVO's semaglutide, Eli Lilly's tirzepatide,  and Boehringer Ingelheim's survodutide focused on steatosis.  In the NASH space we have Sagimet's denifanstat, Akero's efruxifermin, and 89bio with pegozafermin.

Madrigal, with their approved drug, is the leader in the field and reported continuing progress with Rezdiffra studies which included data on possible MetALD uses for the drug.

Intercept also had new data on their long term studies of Oclavia which continued to show value for NASH patients and delivered very robust safety data which might be used to reapply to FDA.  (just my thought, no information about that possibility was disclosed)

I haven't mention all the teams working in the space. There are also other players, such as Inventiva with lanifibranor and Regeneron with HSD17B13 but the list above are the ones who reported new results at the EASL conference.  

There is still a long way to go and not all of these will make it through to FDA approval, but this is the strongest field of candidates that we have seen.  It is an exciting time in the field of liver research.

All of these reported good results.  These are primarily phase 2 studies so there is still a lot of work to do but this is the most robust slate of potential treatments that we have had in a long time.