Nice article on NASH Golfyeti. NASH is definitely a growing probelm. As far as I know, Resverlogix has not presented any NASH-related clinical or pre-clinical data for apabetalone. To my knowledge, there are no NASH-related endpoints in BETonMACE other than standard blood chemistry for liver transaminases, bilirubin and lipids; however, those are not NASH-specific.  

The BET inhibitor/NASH study that you referenced from earlier this year was in mice and used a pan-BET inhibitor from GSK (GSK1210151A; I-BET151). Mice were treated with the pan-BET inhibitor for 3 weeks. Encouraging results. Too bad they didn't try the BD-2 selective apabetalone in this study. Golf suggested that this article showed how "BET inhibition may be useful in treating NASH through its regulation of the farnesoid X receptor (FXR)." I scanned through the article and saw no mention of FXR (farnesoid X receptor). Whereas many of the NASH therapies being tested in clinical trials right now are agonists (activators) of FXR, it is possible that BET inhibitors act through a different mechanism. Recall that studies in primary hepatocytes have shown that apabetalone robustly suppresses the mRNA and protein levels of FXR (see this post for my rant on apabetalone, FXR and liver transaminases). Activation of the FXR transcription factor and suppression of FXR levels do not seem to match up as similar strategies.

BearDownAZ