This week we’re focusing on an area of clinical research that has been of great interest for a number of years, that is NASH, also known as MASH.

It’s a high area of unmet medical need, with over 20 million diagnosed cases across Europe and the USA, and while there are more than 80 therapies currently in the pipeline, only around 5% of these are in Phase III development.

One company working in this area is San Francisco-based 89bio (Nasdaq: ETNB), which has a candidate now in Phase III, pegozafermin, and in this episode we are joined by the company’s chief executive, Rohan Palekar.

We are also joined by Dr Arun Sanyal, who is Professor of Medicine at VCU Health and founder of the Liver Trust.

This week we are speaking with the chief executive of British drug development company Ellipses Pharma.

Founded in 2018 to create new cancer therapies, the firm is following a unique multimodal approach to clinical development, leveraging a variety of technologies.

That’s not the only way that Ellipses is rethinking drug development. The company uses a consultative model to provide an unbiased vetting process for candidates, with the goal of de-risking initial asset selection.

Ellipses also wants to make sure that capital is invested in the most efficient way, pursuing a portfolio-based strategy which ensures uninterrupted development capital for each asset.

Our guest on the show is Ellipses CEO and co-founder, Dr Rajan Jethwa.

In the world of outsourced clinical research, ICON is a big fish in a pond full of other increasingly big fish.

In this episode of The Pharma Letter Podcast, we chat with the company’s chief commercial officer, George McMillan.

Like many in the industry, the Dublin-headquartered clinical research organization (CRO) has sought to grow in size to take advantage of increasing demand for its services.

A coming together of numerous advances in biotechnology over recent years has led to a new wave of innovation in the life sciences.

Much of the innovation has come from smaller biotech firms, sometimes incubated by hands-on investment groups dedicated to nurturing early-stage science.

But such start-ups need support to progress into clinical-stage development and beyond, with regulators keeping a close eye on the development and manufacture of new technologies.

This is one area in which CROs and CDMOs have picked up the slack.

Another trend is the increasing desire on the part of large pharmaceutical players to divest non-core parts of the business and focus on their key strengths - providing an opportunity for a company like ICON to pick up new partnerships and development opportunities.

As new biologics and cell and gene therapies start to have a real impact on people’s lives and health, the degree of specialism required has enabled some companies to establish themselves as leading experts in certain areas.

The future looks bright, and as the impact of artificial intelligence is increasingly felt in this sector, there is surely plenty more to come.