Still lifetime of Wegovy an injectable prescription weight reduction medicine that has helped individuals with obesity. It ought to be used with a weight reduction plan and physical activity.
Michael Siluk | UCG | Getty Images
Drugmakers have been scrambling to join a two-horse race to guide the market for popular weight reduction drugs, which may very well be value tens of billions in lower than a decade.
Demand is barely expected to grow, leaving room within the segment for lesser-known weight reduction drug hopefuls comparable to the privately held German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim and smaller public firms comparable to Terns Pharmaceuticals, Viking Therapeutics and Structure Therapeutics.
The following entrants into the booming market have a key window of opportunity in the approaching years: Goldman Sachs analysts expect 15 million U.S. adults to be on obesity medications by 2030.
Throughout the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco last week, attendees flocked to listen to Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly – the 2 dominant players in the burden loss drug space – discuss what to anticipate this 12 months from their blockbuster weight reduction drugs. Demand for those treatments soared, and so they slipped into shortages during the last 12 months, as they helped patients shed significant weight over time.
Other large drugmakers comparable to Pfizer — which has a widely followed but thus far ill-fated weight reduction drug program — Amgen, Roche and AstraZeneca also outlined their strategies for joining the market.
But other firms with weight reduction drug ambitions have garnered less attention throughout the recent weight reduction drug industry gold rush. They may soon compete with the larger players.
Listed below are a few of the lesser-known businesses angling to enter the market.
Boehringer Ingelheim
Boehringer Ingelheim is developing a weight reduction drug with Danish biotech firm Zealand Pharma. That company has been working on obesity treatments for nearly a decade.
Their experimental drug works by targeting two gut hormones: GLP-1 to suppress appetite, and glucagon to extend energy expenditure. Some popular weight reduction drugs comparable to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy only goal GLP-1.
Boehringer Ingelheim in August said it was moving the drug, called survodutide, right into a late-stage study, bringing it one step closer to potential Food and Drug Administration approval. A mid-stage trial found patients who’re chubby or have obesity lost as much as 19% of their weight after 46 weeks of treatment with the drug.
That weight reduction may very well be closer to twenty% to 25% in a phase three trial, Zealand Pharma said ahead of the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference last week. It’s unclear when that product could win approval.
Terns Pharmaceuticals
Smaller drugmakers are developing their very own weight reduction drugs. They might eventually enter the market through a buyout or partnerships with large pharmaceutical firms.
Those firms include Terns Pharmaceuticals, which is way earlier in the event process than Boehringer Ingelheim is.
The corporate is conducting an early-stage trial examining its oral weight reduction drug, which works by targeting GLP-1, in patients who’re chubby or obese. Oral drugs will likely be easier for patients to take and for firms to fabricate in comparison with the prevailing weight reduction injections.
Terns Pharmaceuticals expects to release initial 28-day data from that trial within the second half of 2024, the corporate’s head of research and development, Erin Quirk, said throughout the conference.
Quirk acknowledged that it may be difficult for Terns to set its pill aside from other weight reduction drugs. But she added that “even when it is not the very best…analysts are on the market predicting that this may very well be $100 billion market. In case you get a 1% piece of that, that is a $1 billion drug, right?”
Small biotech firms make moves
Other small drugmakers attempting to enter the space include Viking Therapeutics, which is developing drugs that concentrate on GLP-1 and one other hormone called GIP. Those are the identical hormones that Eli Lilly’s weight reduction and diabetes drugs, Zepbound and Mounjaro, goal.
Viking Therapeutics expects to release mid-stage trial data on its weight reduction injection in the primary half of the 12 months. An early-stage study on that drug showed that it caused as much as 7.8% weight reduction after 28 days.
The corporate can also be slated to release phase one trial data on an oral version of its weight reduction drug throughout the first quarter of the 12 months.
Structure Therapeutics is similarly developing an obesity pill, which missed Wall Street’s expectations for weight reduction in a mid-stage trial last month.
The oral drug helped obese patients lose roughly 5% of their weight in comparison with patients who received a placebo after eight weeks. Before that data was published, Jefferies analyst Roger Song had said he was expecting 6% to 7% weight reduction relative to a placebo.
Structure said it expects full 12-week results on patients with obesity within the second quarter of this 12 months. The corporate plans to launch a bigger mid-stage study within the second half of 2024 and a late-stage trial in 2026.
Potential players down the road
Some large drugmakers signaled that they may eventually move to enter the burden loss drug market.
That features French company Sanofi, whose own GLP-1 drug failed a mid-stage trial almost half a decade ago. In the approaching years, the corporate could have a look at potential “next-generation” weight reduction drugs that might have benefits over the prevailing treatments, comparable to fewer negative effects, executives told industry news publication Endpoint News on the JPMorgan Healthcare conference.
“There’s loads of determination in firms, including ours to say, the primary wave goes to be this, what is the second wave going to be?” said Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson.
Meanwhile, Bayer‘s pharmaceuticals head Stefan Oelrich said in an interview throughout the conference that the corporate is hesitant to enter the obesity market by itself, but it surely may partner with other firms.