Author’s note: I am grateful to CEO & President, Dr. Steve Mento and management, for granting me the interview.
Introduction
Conatus Pharmaceuticals (CNAT) is a small cap ($59M) clinical stage biopharma. Emricasan, a dual anti-apoptotic/anti-inflammatory oral irreversible pan-caspase inhibitor, is its lead investigative Phase 2b drug candidate currently being evaluated in 3 clinical trials as I alluded to in the summary.
On December 6, 2018, Conatus announced that top-line data readout from ENCORE-PH Phase 2b clinical trial in NASH Cirrhosis Portal Hypertension (PH) did not meet its primary clinical outcome of