Lipocine's shares soar on promising NASH candidate data

US drug developer Lipocine (Nasdaq: LPCN) saw its shares rocket 125% pre-market on Thursday after it said its LPCN 1144  non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) treatment showed an "absolute mean reduction" from baseline of 7.6% liver fat and demonstrated a 38% relative mean liver fat reduction from baseline.

The stock was still up over 40% at $2.24 by around midday, even though there are plenty of reasons to wait before declaring this trial a success, including missing patients, small patient numbers, and the lack of placebo control, according to Jonathan Gardner, writing on Vantage, the editorial arm of the Evaluate group

The Liver Fat Study is designed to assess the therapy potential of LPCN 1144 in NASH with liver fat changes assessed using magnetic resonance imaging, proton density fat fraction (MRI-PDFF) technique, a non-invasive quantitative biomarker of liver fat content.