Fish oil trash talk

Success always breeds copycats, and we’re seeing a bit of that in the case of Matinas BioPharma. The microcap biotech canned development of its fish oil drug three years back — but now that Amarin's topline results show that its own fish oil heart drug appears to be a resounding success, Matinas wants back in.

“We’re so thrilled for Amarin because they took advantage of the opportunity to create a new class of drug where they have the opportunity to treat 64 million patients per year,” Matinas CEO Jerry Jabbour said at a recent conference. “And we stand just behind them with a better drug.”

That’s highly debatable, as Matinas’s drug, MAT9001, has yet to be interrogated in a late-stage trial. But the boasts continued …