Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

OCRX +40%/AH—animal data suggests OCR-002 might work in NAFLD/NASH:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ocera-therapeutics-announces-presentation-data-200500336.html

Ocera Therapeutics, Inc…today announced that data from an investigator-sponsored preclinical study of Ocera’s validated ammonia scavenger, ornithine phenylacetate (OCR-002), will be presented in a poster session at The International Liver Congress of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL 2017) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on Thursday, April 20, 2017.

The study investigated the effect of OCR-002 in a NAFLD rat model in which animals were fed a High Fat and High Cholesterol (HFHC) diet for up to 16 weeks. Compared to normal rats, NAFLD rats showed a significant increase in ammonia (p<0.05), as well as increased blood levels of cholesterol, ALT and AST. The NAFLD rats treated with OCR-002 showed significant reduction in the progression of fibrosis compared to untreated NAFLD rats. Moreover, OCR-002 substantially reduced:

• Liver / Body weight ratio
• Hepatic lipid content, and
• Hepatic collagen

I don’t expect this gain to hold, but I was wrong the last time I said that (#msg-129328001).