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Pfizer Working To Catch Up In NASH With Fat-Reducing Compounds

 
• By Joseph Haas

Just moving into Phase II with a pair of candidates, Pfizer trails smaller rivals in the NASH race, but the deep-pocked firm may have the assets to develop its own proprietary combination therapy for the large-scale unmet medical need.

Morrie Birnbaum of Pfizer
Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer, Internal Medicine, Morris Birnbaum

Pfizer Inc.’s R&D efforts in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) have been going on for about six and a half years, but the pharma only presented its first clinical data for a NASH candidate at the 2018 International Liver Conference in April. The company is advancing three clinical candidates for NASH, with a diabetes candidate also possibly offering potential in the unmet medical need, with a focus on reducing fat in the liver and the hope that other aspects of the disease will show benefit as well.

“Because we're operating [the program] out of a metabolic unit and that's our bias as well as our expertise, we...

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