BELLEVUE, Wash. & SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Inipharm, a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing therapies for severe liver diseases, today announced that it has appointed Chuhan Chung, M.D., as the company’s chief medical officer. Inipharm will also be presenting preclinical data on one of its small molecule HSD17B13 inhibitors at the International Liver Congress™ 2022, occurring in London.
Dr. Chung joins Inipharm after serving as executive director and global development lead at Gilead Sciences, where he was responsible for clinical studies in NASH and primary sclerosing cholangitis. Before joining Gilead, Dr. Chung served as associate professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, Section of Gastroenterology & Hepatology where he maintained an independently funded lab focused on conducting translational research in liver disease.
“Multiple clinical datasets have demonstrated that inactive forms of HSD17B13 are associated with protection against severe liver disease,” said Dr. Chung. “This provides a strong rationale for targeting HSD17B13, and I look forward to working with our leadership team and scientific advisors to develop and execute clinical development plans for this exciting program.”
Inipharm’s presentation at the International Liver Congress, entitled “Metabolomic changes in NASH phenotype liver-on-a-chip caused by INI-678, a small molecule HSD17B13 inhibitor, supports a role for HSD17B13 in inflammation and fibrosis,” will focus on the impact of inhibiting HSD17B13 with a well characterized inhibitor, INI-678, in a NASH phenotype “liver-on-chip” system containing primary human liver cells. In this model, treatment with INI-678 resulted in improvements in markers of fibrosis which were accompanied by decreased levels of bile acids, stabilized choline and decreased hexose.
“The metabolomics in a primary human cell system treated with a potent, selective inhibitor of HSD17B13 point to the key role that this target plays in pathways that are important to liver health,” said Heather Hsu, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Inipharm. “The overall findings are consistent with the liver protective effects observed in human carriers of inactive HSD17B13 alleles.”
About Inipharm
Inipharm is a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing therapies for severe liver diseases. Inipharm’s lead programs are focused on the highly validated genetic target, HSD17B13. Extensive, consistent evidence that genetic variants in expression of HSD17B13 are associated with significantly lower rates and severity of multiple liver diseases. Building on these novel insights into the biologic activity of HSD17B13, Inipharm is advancing a pipeline of small-molecule therapies that target the activity of this protein.
