By Maggie Fick
LONDON, June 8 (Reuters) – AstraZeneca said on Monday that patients lost 10.5% of their body weight after 26 weeks in a mid-stage trial of its experimental obesity pill, as the drugmaker seeks to challenge Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in the fast-growing weight-loss market.
The company said the weight loss continued over time and that adults with obesity or overweight receiving the highest dose of elecoglipron lost 11.8% of their weight after 36 weeks, the full duration of the trial.
Detailed results on elecoglipron, a once-daily pill, were presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting in New Orleans. The drugmaker said in February that the trial had met its primary endpoints and would advance to late-stage trials but did not provide details.
If successful in that trial and approved, the drug could compete with Novo’s Wegovy pill, which produced about 14% weight loss, and Lilly’s Foundayo pill, which delivered a 12% reduction in weight in a late-stage trial.
The data follow results presented at the same conference by Roche, which said patients lost 22.7% of their body weight after 48 weeks in a mid-stage trial of its experimental obesity injection called enicepatide.
That dual target drug is akin to Lilly’s Zepbound, which delivered more than 20% weight loss after 72 weeks in its pivotal trial.
The company sees elecoglipron as a cornerstone of its obesity strategy and plans to explore combinations with other medicines aimed at treating obesity and related conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease and heart disease, Sharon Barr, executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca, told Reuters.
The AstraZeneca study enrolled 310 adults with obesity or overweight and at least one weight-related condition. Nearly 89% of patients receiving the highest dose achieved at least 5% weight loss, hitting another goal of the trial.
At the next smaller dose of 50 mg, patients in the trial lost 8% of body weight at 26 weeks and 9% at 36 weeks.
It said the most common side effects were gastrointestinal ones like nausea and constipation, which are commonly associated with the GLP-1 medicines originally developed to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetes patients.
It said the most common adverse events with a 75 mg dose of elecoglipron were nausea at 55% compared to 20% in the placebo group, constipation at 41% compared with 6% taking placebo, diarrhoea at 35% compared with 25% and vomiting at 27% versus 5%.
“We had a very low rate of discontinuation, which really points to the effectiveness and durability of this therapy,” Barr said.
In a separate trial in people with type 2 diabetes, the drug met its primary endpoint for control of blood sugar and at the highest dose of 75 mg led to weight loss of 7.7% at 26 weeks.
AstraZeneca licensed elecoglipron for up to about $2 billion from China’s Eccogene in late 2023.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick; editing by Caroline Humer and Nia Williams)
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