Ocera Therapeutics Announces Positive Results with AST-120 in...( - Data Presented at the American ...)

- Data Presented at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual

Scientific Meeting -

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Ocera Therapeutics, Inc., a privately-held biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of proprietary compounds to treat gastrointestinal and liver diseases announced today that data from the first cohort of patients from an exploratory Phase 2 study evaluating the efficacy and safety of AST-120 in patients with active pouchitis was presented in a poster presentation at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting.

"A four-week treatment with AST-120 in patients with active pouchitis led to a significant decrease in symptoms of pouchitis and endoscopy scores in the first ten patients enrolled in the study," said Dr. Bo Shen, principal investigator at the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Cleveland Clinic. "These results were impressive with 44.4% of the patients achieving clinical remission and 55.6% achieving a clinical response."

"These promising results warrant the further evaluation of AST-120 for the treatment of pouchitis in controlled randomized studies," added Laurent Fischer, M.D. president and CEO of Ocera Therapeutics. "We are encouraged by these findings which further support our strategy of exploring AST-120 as a platform drug with the potential to address multiple gastrointestinal and liver diseases."

Patients who suffer from Ulcerative Colitis often require a resection of the colon to reduce the risk of cancer. A J-pouch is created to collect stools and the pouch often becomes inflamed, a condition known as pouchitis, which is associated with diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever and dehydration. Pouchitis occurs in up to 40% of patients with a J-pouch and there are no treatments currently approved for this indication. An estimated 80,000 patients in the United States suffer from this condition, which qualifies a
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