Not a total gamble this is...Dr Wallace is a reputed scientist, a physician and has a long history of working with tbis drug. See below some stuff from long back...but still valid and hope it all worked out well in Phase 2B
"John Wallace, a pharmacologist and director of the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute at McMaster University, compared naproxen, a commonly used NSAID, to a novel anti-inflammatory drug, ATB-346, which he developed in collaboration with a team of Italian chemists and is now commercializing through his company, Antibe Therapeutics Inc.
ATB-346 is a derivative of naproxen which releases hydrogen sulfide. Evidence from animal studies suggests that in small quantities, hydrogen sulfide can protect the stomach from injury and can accelerate the healing of pre-existing ulcers.
"I’ve been working on NSAIDs for over 20 years," said Wallace, a professor of medicine in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University. "This particular drug is, by far, the shining star. We’ve tested it in every model where it should fail, and it has performed exceptionally well."
To examine the gastrointestinal safety and anti-inflammatory effectiveness of ATB-346, Wallace and his co-investigators tested the drug in healthy rats as well as those with arthritis and inflammation. The researchers also examined the impact of the drug on rats with compromised gastrointestinal tracts, a model which mimicked the clinical scenario in which NSAIDs are frequently used and have caused damage such as bleeding and ulcers.
"From the beginning, we decided that we were going to do the most rigorous testing of any NSAID that’s ever been done," Wallace said. "We very deliberately tested the drug in models where NSAIDs fail."
The researchers found that ATB-346 was at least as effective as naproxen in relieving inflammation in animal models. They also discovered that ATB-346 was in the order of 100 times safer than naproxen, causing little or no damage to the stomach and small iintestine "