December 5, 2019
Impact: High
- CymaBay Therapeutics has terminated its phase 2b study of PPARδ agonist, seladelpar, in patients with NASH due to atypical histological findings.
- Planned, blinded histological assessments of liver biopsies from trial participants revealed histology characterized as an interface hepatitis presentation, with or without biliary injury.
- Notably, the atypical histological findings were observed in patients who demonstrated on-study improvement or stabilization of their biochemical measures of inflammation and liver injury and none of these patients experienced liver-related adverse events after 52 weeks of treatment. Evaluation is ongoing to better understand these findings.
- The company also terminated its recently initiated phase 2 study of seladelpar in primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), and all studies in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) have been placed on clinical hold.