West Conshohocken-based Madrigal Pharmaceuticals Inc., with just nine employees and a market value of about $4.3 billion, is exploring a sale after receiving takeover interest from other drugmakers eyeing treatments for a liver disease linked to obesity, people familiar with the matter said.

The company is working with investment bank Centerview Partners Holdings on the potential sale, the people said, declining to be identified as the matter is private. The deliberations are at an early stage and Madrigal may opt to continue operations on its own, they said. The shares jumped in New York., writes  Manuel Baigorri and Cristin Flanagan for bloomberg.com.

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Shares of the drug developer jumped as much as 9.3 percent before trading up 5.3 percent at $297.72 as of 11:35 a.m. in New York. The stock had risen in December after MRI results from a mid-stage study showed Madrigal’s MGL-3196 cut liver fat more than a placebo. Biopsy results in May gave it another lift when data confirmed that more patients getting Madrigal’s therapy had their disease disappear compared to those getting a placebo.

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