or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” and “Risk Factors” sections contained in this Form
10-Q
and our Annual Report on Form
10-K
for the year ended December 31, 2021. Our operating results are not necessarily indicative of results that may occur for the full fiscal year or any other future period.
About Madrigal Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
. We are a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pursuing novel therapeutics for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a liver disease with high unmet medical need. Our lead product candidate, resmetirom, is a proprietary, liver-directed, selective thyroid hormone receptor-ß, or
THR-ß,
agonist being developed as a once-daily oral pill that can potentially be used to treat NASH and a number of disease states with high unmet medical need.
Our Patient Market Opportunity.
NASH is a serious inflammatory form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD. NAFLD has become the most common liver disease in the United States and other developed countries and is characterized by an accumulation of fat in the liver with no other apparent causes. NASH can progress to cirrhosis or liver failure, require liver transplantation and can also result in liver cancer. Progression of NASH to end stage liver disease will soon surpass all other causes of liver failure requiring liver transplantation. Importantly, beyond these critical conditions, NASH and NAFLD patients additionally suffer heightened cardiovascular risk and, in fact, die more frequently from cardiovascular events than from liver disease. NASH and NAFLD have grown as a consequence of rising worldwide obesity-related disorders. In the United States, NAFLD is estimated to affect approximately 25% of the population, and approximately 25% of those will progress from NAFLD to NASH. Current estimates place NASH prevalence at approximately 20 million people in the United States, or five to six percent of the adult population, with similar prevalence in Europe and Asia. The prevalence of NASH is also increasing in developing regions due to the adoption of a more sedentary lifestyle and a diet consisting of processed foods with high fat and fructose content.
For NASH, we enrolled 125 patients in a Phase 2 clinical trial with resmetirom. We achieved the
12-week
primary endpoint for this Phase 2 clinical trial and reported the results in December 2017, and we reported positive topline
36-week
results at the conclusion of the Phase 2 clinical trial in May 2018. We also completed a
36-week,
open-label extension study in 31 participating NASH patients from our Phase 2 clinical trial, which included 14 patients who received placebo in the main study.
On December 18, 2019 the Company announced it had opened for enrollment
MAESTRO-NAFLD-1,
a
52-week,
non-invasive,
multi-center, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 clinical study of patients with biopsy-confirmed or presumed NASH recruited from sites in the U.S. Key endpoints are safety, including safety biomarkers. Secondary endpoints include LDL cholesterol, lipid biomarkers,
MRI-PDFF,
NASH and fibrosis biomarkers. Except for serial liver biopsies, the study protocol is similar to the MAESTRO-NASH study (discussed below
under “—Our Ongoing and Planned Studies”), with resmetirom doses of 80 mg or 100 mg or placebo. Enrollment objectives for this study were exceeded, with approximately 1,300 patients enrolled overall. The
MAESTRO-NAFLD-1
study will help support the adequacy of the safety database at the time of NDA submission for Subpart H approval for treatment of NASH in patients with F2 or F3 fibrosis. In November of 2021, we reported data from the open label
non-cirrhotic
arm of
MAESTRO-NAFLD-1,
and in January 2022 we announced that we achieved primary and secondary endpoints for the double-blind portion of
MAESTRO-NAFLD-1.
Further
MAESTRO-NAFLD-1
data were presented at a hepatology medical congress in June of 2022.
MAESTRO-NAFLD-1
has completed the double-blind arms and an open-label 100 mg arm. An additional open-label active treatment arm in patients with early (well-compensated) NASH cirrhosis is ongoing.
We also completed a 116 patient Phase 2 clinical trial and announced results in February 2018 for the use of resmetirom in patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, or HeFH. In addition to the NASH and HeFH Phase 2 clinical trials, resmetirom has also been studied in multiple completed Phase 1 trials in a total of more than 300 subjects. Resmetirom was well-tolerated in these trials, which included a single ascending dose trial, a multiple ascending dose trial, several drug interaction studies, a multiple dose mass balance study, a single dose relative bioavailability study of tablet formulation versus capsule formulation, a multiple dose drug interaction study, a multiple dose drug interaction with food effect study, and a hepatic impairment study.
Our Ongoing and Planned Studies.
On March 28, 2019, the Company announced that it had initiated MAESTRO-NASH, a Phase 3 trial in NASH with its once daily, oral thyroid hormone receptor beta selective agonist, resmetirom. This double-blind, placebo-controlled study is being conducted at more than 230 sites in the United States and the rest of the world. Patients with liver biopsy confirmed NASH with stage 2 or 3 fibrosis are being randomized 1:1:1 to receive a single oral daily dose of placebo, resmetirom 80 mg or resmetirom 100 mg. A second liver biopsy at week 52 in the first 900 patients will be the basis of filing for accelerated approval under subpart H of applicable FDA regulations, which we refer to as subpart
H-accelerated
approval. Historically: the primary endpoint pertained to the percent of patients treated with either dose of resmetirom as compared with placebo who achieve NASH resolution on the week 52 liver biopsy, defined as the absence of hepatocyte ballooning (score=0), and minimal lobular inflammation (score
0-1),
associated with at least a
2-point
reduction in NAS (NAFLD Activity Score), and no worsening of fibrosis stage; and two key secondary endpoints pertained to reduction in
LDL-cholesterol
and a
1-point
or more improvement in fibrosis stage on the week