Dive Brief:

• An experimental pill developed by Novo Nordisk helped obese people lose 13% of their body weight after three months of treatment in a small clinical trial, the company said Thursday, in a result one analyst described as among the best of any weight loss drug tested so far. 
• The drug, called amycretin, is one of a handful of medicines Novo hopes can build on the success of its fast-selling obesity drug Wegovy. Unlike Wegovy, amycretin stimulates two gut hormones, GLP-1 and amylin, that affect appetite and blood sugar levels. It’s also taken orally, not via injections. 
• The announcement comes as Novo looks to stave off a laundry list of competitors in a market Wall Street analysts expect to skyrocket in the coming years. Eli Lilly has already won approval of one such medicine, Zepbound, and a number of other large and small companies are advancing other prospects. Leerink Partners forecasts $158 billion in total yearly obesity drug sales in 2032.

Dive Insight:

Novo’s data are from a Phase 1 trial testing multiple doses of its drug against a placebo in 144 people. The results, disclosed at an investor presentation on Thursday, only involved a group of 16 people on an unspecified dose. 

According to Novo, those who received a placebo lost 1% of their body weight over 12 weeks, meaning its drug was associated with placebo-adjusted weight loss of about 12% during the evaluation period. 

That measurement was “exploratory,” and thus didn’t meet the criteria for statistical significance. Comparing drugs across trials is also fraught with potential caveats. Nonetheless, the findings reverberated through the sector, as each development in the obesity drug chase is being closely watched by investors and analysts looking to see how each new medicine might measure up. 

Neither Wegovy nor Zepbound, for instance, were associated with more than 10% weight loss after 12 weeks in the studies underlying their approvals. A newer drug Novo’s working on, CagriSema, helped obese people lose 17% of their body weight at 20 weeks, while an injectable from Viking Therapeutics was associated with 15% weight loss in 13 weeks. 

A pill Lilly has in Phase 3 testing, meanwhile, hit 13% weight loss at 26 weeks. Structure Therapeutics’ experimental pill produced 5% weight loss in an early trial. 

Novo’s new results, then, are “at the highest end of weight loss seen” in testing of obesity drugs, wrote ISI Evercore analyst Umer Raffat. They also caused Novo’s Denmark-traded stock to surge 8%, while shares of Viking, which is also developing an oral weight-loss medicine, fell more than 17%. 

However, Raffat cautioned that, if amycretin were to get to market, Novo could be limited by its manufacturing capacity. High doses of amycretin would require as much as 1 billion milligrams a week — far more than Novo currently produces — to meet the demands of the U.S. market alone.