Terns Pharmaceuticals touts mid-stage success for NASH drug, stock falls

Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals said a high dose of its ex­per­i­men­tal oral NASH treat­ment helped re­duce liv­er fat in a Phase IIa tri­al.

The Fos­ter City, CA-based bio­phar­ma said Tues­day in a re­lease that TERN-501, a once-a-day THR-β ag­o­nist, met the pri­ma­ry end­point and all sec­ondary end­points in the DUET tri­al.

The study test­ed three dose lev­els of TERN-501 — 1 mg, 3 mg and 6 mg — as a monother­a­py, as well as in com­bi­na­tion with TERN-101, an FXR ag­o­nist can­di­date. It as­sessed liv­er fat us­ing a mea­sur­ing sys­tem called mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing, pro­ton den­si­ty fat frac­tion, or MRI-PDFF.

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