GALT - Galectin Therapeutics to Present at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) 2024 Congress | Benzinga
NORCROSS, Ga., June 04, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Galectin Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:GALT), the leading developer of therapeutics that target galectin-3, today announced that it will attend the EASL 2024 meeting and deliver a scientific presentation. The meeting will be held June 5-8, 2024, in Milan, Italy.
"At this year's meeting we are again pleased to share important scientific information with the hepatology community. Through the knowledge captured from our belapectin program, we are adding knowledge on liver cirrhosis, a disease that dramatically affects the lives of our patients and has been neglected for far too long. This year we show that collagen content in liver biopsies of MASH cirrhotic patients fails to correlate with measures of portal pressure, a main marker of disease progression. This further emphasizes the importance of using esophago-gastro-duodenal endoscopies to document the development esophageal varices, a direct consequence of increased portal pressure. The data also provide support to the use of prevention of esophageal varices as a primary outcome measure of efficacy for candidate drugs," said Pol Boudes, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Galectin Therapeutics. "In liver cirrhosis, the early recognition of portal hypertension is essential and allows to potentially address the cirrhotic disease process when it is still potentially reversible, and before liver transplant becomes the only curative option. Our results are not surprising when you consider that a liver biopsy provides tissue representing only 0.0002% of the hepatic gland and thus cannot fully reflect the health of this large organ1. It is also important to understand that liver biopsies present more risk in patients with portal hypertension. On the other hand, we have shown in our belapectin program that endoscopies are generally well tolerated and safe."
1 Colloredo G, Guido M, Sonzogni A, Leandro G. Impact of liver biopsy size on histological ...