RE:Nash partnership deal This looks like a high risk option bet. Never seen anything in the literature around RNA interference drugs for NASH treatment, but maybe it's the new-new thing. I see they have a slew of RNAi drugs for lots of highly specific individual genetic markers, but none are yet into Phase 3.
I'm sure they have something around liver disease, but as we've all learned over time from Grinspoon and Harrison, the disease is not expressed in one individual way and is more a whole slew of things cascading and interacting around liver health. Hence, why so many completely different approaches have been tried. So maybe targeting one genetic trait and interupting it will work, but it might be it's more valuable in combo with other drugs and not as a mono-therapy.
Maybe a Glaxo scientist is all hot around RNAi technologies and this is their way in to understand it better and get a mark on a company. Their trial for this compound was 44 people in New Zealand.