A Market Materialises from Thin Air
Until last week, the market for MASH treatments was worth precisely zero. Not a sausage. It’s a dreadful condition, progressing from a fatty liver to potentially fatal cirrhosis, and doctors could do little more than recommend a healthier lifestyle. Now, with one regulatory approval, a multi-billion pound market has just blinked into existence. Millions of people have the condition, and for the first time, there’s an approved medicine for it.
What’s truly significant here is the precedent. The FDA has essentially drawn a map for other drug developers. By granting an 'accelerated approval' based on improving liver scarring, they’ve told the industry what it needs to do to get a product over the line. This removes a huge amount of the guesswork and risk that has plagued liver disease research for decades. Suddenly, a field once considered a graveyard for promising drugs looks like fertile ground.