Conatus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CNAT)

[staccani]

Nothing separate Emricasan from the pack... because there is no pack. There were only two other drugs being developed for Liver Cirrhosis. GILD Simtuzumab, whose development was withdrawn as monotherapy, and now it is being tested in a ph2a in combination, and the irrelevant GALT GRMD02 which has already failed advanced fibrosis.
Emricasan on the other hand has shown considerable promise since able to halt LC progression and in fact improve liver functionality for the patients who need most (people who qualify for a transplant) regardless of LC etiology (hence not only in NASH). So there are good chances that ph2b in NASH decomopensated cirrhosis will be successful and there are at least 5M patients globally having decompensated Cirrhosis due to variuos etiologies, whose life expectancy at 1 year is anywhere between 40% and 70%. I expect that once approved for NASH LC, they will apply for an sNDA for other LC etiologies

This is what Novartis has seen and that is why they will be investing $1B-$1.5B to get the drug to the market and share the profits with CNAT