An experimental weight-loss shot from Eli Lilly & Co. yielded the strongest results of any treatment yet, another boost for the company’s efforts to dominate the burgeoning obesity drug market.
(Bloomberg) — An experimental weight-loss shot from Eli Lilly & Co. yielded the strongest results of any treatment yet, another boost for the company’s efforts to dominate the burgeoning obesity drug market.
Obese patients shed an average of 24.2% of their body weight, about 58 pounds, on the highest dose of the drug after 48 weeks, according to a study released Monday by the New England Journal of Medicine. A quarter of those getting the highest dose lost 30% or more, the company-funded, mid-stage trial showed.
“We have not seen results like this before in a trial of less than one year duration with an anti-obesity medication,” said Ania Jastreboff, lead author of the study and director of the Yale Obesity Research Center.
Lilly shares rose in post-market trading after the results were released, gaining 1.2% at 6:24 p.m. in New York.
Already the most valuable drugmaker in the world on anticipation of its obesity drugs, Lilly is endeavoring to take the lead in a market for weight-loss therapies seen reaching $150 billion by 2031. Rivals standing in the way are Wegovy-maker Novo Nordisk A/S, along with a crop of experimental drugs from Pfizer Inc., AstraZeneca Plc and Amgen Inc.
Read More: Pfizer Halts Early-Stage Obesity Drug on High Liver Enzymes
Lilly’s Mounjaro, a diabetes drug that the company aims to sell for weight loss, mimics hormones called GLP-1 and GIP. In an earlier study, it helped obese patients lose an average of 21% of their body weight; those getting the highest dose of the drug lost an average 22.5%.
The next step in the arms race, retatrutide imitates a third hormone called glucagon, with the goal of stimulating patients’ use of energy without increasing appetite. Later-stage trials will be needed to confirm the data.
Best So Far
Retatrutide “does look potentially like the best GLP-1 based medicine so far,” Daniel Drucker, a University of Toronto researcher who’s done critical work on gut hormones, said in an interview. Doctors are looking for the drugs to be “the start of a new era that is going to, I think, rival bariatric surgery” for weight loss, he said.
Novo is also developing CagriSema, a shot aimed at increasing weight loss that could compete with retatrutide. The Novo drug is a combination of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy, and a drug that mimics amylin, another weight-related hormone.
Read More: Lilly Experimental Weight-Loss Pill Gets Rapid Results in Study
In Lilly’s study, side effects beyond the usual nausea and vomiting associated with GLP-1 drugs included 17 patients with abnormal heart rhythms in the retatrutide group, one of them severe after taking anti-vomiting medication. Two patients who received placebos had abnormal hearth rhythms in the 337-patient study carried out by researchers from Harvard, Yale and Lilly.
Heart-rate increases — also linked to the weight-loss drugs — peaked about halfway through the trial and declined thereafter. Almost all the patients who got retatrutide lost at least 5% of their body weight, and almost two-thirds who got the smallest dose lost 15% or more.
The dropout rate due to adverse events was between 6% and 16% depending on dosing.
Retatrutide also improved blood sugar control in people with type 2 diabetes, dropping some patients’ levels into the normal range, according to a presentation at the American Diabetes Association conference in San Diego, California. And in a study of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, it reduced liver fat by 70% in at least 80% of participants who took higher doses.
The final-stage study will last as long as 80 weeks to assess the maximum weight loss, Lilly’s Jeff Emmick, senior vice president of product development, said in an interview. The late-stage trials will also study the impact for people with osteoarthritis and sleep apnea so that drug approval could come for several indications at once, he said.
–With assistance from Matthew Griffin.
(Updates shares in fifth paragraph, liver data in penultimate paragraph.)
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