MikeMareen
I wrote back in February about the pileup in GLP-1 drug development, and even that post didn’t get to all the things going on in this area. There’s been even more news recently, so I thought that a quick update might be a good idea.
Roche/Genentech (OTCQX:RHHBY) jumped into this area with a $2.7 billion dollar buyout of Carmot late last year, and they already have good news about that investment. The mean weight loss in a Phase 1b trial of the GLP/GIP against CT-388 (once-a-week injection for 24 weeks) has just read out at 18.8%, with (apparently) no safety signals. It’s really hard to compare across different agents and different trials, but this is a strong result by any standard.
Earlier this month, Amgen (AMGN) sort-of-announced positive results on its candidate, MariTide, saying that interim analysis of the Phase II results, saying that the numbers “made them confident in its differentiated profile”. That was enough to goose their stock (and drop those of their competitors a bit), even though there were no numbers involved at all. That’s as good an indicator of the state of this area as anything!
Meanwhile, Boehringer’s partnership with Zealand (OTCPK:ZLDPF) (of Denmark) on another peptide drug, survodutide, reported strong results in one of its multiple concurrent clinical trials, this one in patients with MASH (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis). That’s a condition where excess body weight (and especially excess lipid tissue in the liver) leads to liver inflammation, and strong weight loss is just the thing for it. That drug candidate is of course also being evaluated in straightforward obesity trials as well.
And back in March, the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) request to add cardiovascular benefits to the label of Wegovy (semaglutide) – these benefits had become increasingly apparent in the clinical data, and that’s going to be one of the factors that (might) differentiate these drugs as they start to pile up in late-stage trials and in the actual market. The latest news on that (not published yet, but presented at a recent conference) is that semaglutide’s cardiovascular benefits appear to not be proportional to weight loss itself. These effects are seen regardless of starting weight or percentage weight loss over time, which strongly suggests some direct effect on the cardiovascular system that is still going to have to be worked out.
A recent projection had the market for these drugs expanding to $125 billion by the year 2033. If this goes on, that figure is going to need some upward revision.
Editor’s Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.
