The pharmaceutical company, Chemomab Therapeutics, have announced positive results from their SPRING clinical trial.

The SPRING trial tested a drug called CM-101 in people with PSC. The company reports that CM-101 was found to be well-tolerated with a 'favourable safety profile'. They also report that it is the first trial to demonstrate improvements not only in markers of fibrosis (scarring), itch and liver blood tests but that it also showed a reduction in inflammatory activity.

Douglas Thorburn, MD, Divisional Clinical Director for Liver and Digestive Health at the Royal Free London NHS Trust and Professor of Hepatology within the Institute for Liver and Digestive Health at UCL, is Principal Investigator of the SPRING trial. Professor Thorburn said, “It is very encouraging that 15 weeks of treatment with CM-101 for people with PSC was both generally well tolerated and resulted in improvements across such a broad range of disease-related biomarkers, including liver stiffness, ELF, liver enzymes and even pruritis[itch]. This is a very positive development for patients with this life-threatening disease that has no approved treatments, and I look forward to the continued clinical progress of CM-101.”

Next Steps

As with all encouraging Phase 2 trials, the drug must be tested in further clinical trials before we truly understand if/how it helps people with PSC, and, if it does help, has a chance of being approved for everyday use. Reassuringly, Chemomab Therapeutics is already thinking about undertaking a further trial of CM-101 in PSC.

Thank you to each and every person who participated in the SPRING trial. Participants who took part are able to continue taking CM-101 (or start it if they were in the placebo group) for an additional 33 weeks in a special extension of the study. More than 90% of participants have elected to do this.