Weight loss has at all times been big business, however it’s exploded of late due to surging demand for Ozempic, Wegovy and other latest diabetes and obesity drugs.
In the primary half of 2023, sales of Ozempic and Wegovy rose by 58% and 363%, respectively. That is after quarterly prescriptions for those sorts of GLP-1 treatments, which mimic a hormone within the gut to suppress an individual’s appetite, increased 300% between early 2020 and the tip of last 12 months.
But as consumers and businesses pour extra money and resources into tackling the obesity epidemic, which costs the U.S. greater than $170 billion a 12 months, drug developers aren’t alone in coming up with revolutionary solutions.
Signos, a five-year-old startup, is taking an approach that does not involve pills.
The corporate is using off-the-shelf continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, and providing real-time weight loss plan and exercise recommendations based on a person’s readings. CGMs are small sensors worn on the upper arm that track glucose levels, primarily for people with diabetes. The data is wirelessly sent to a smartphone, allowing the user to higher prevent emergencies.
Signos uses CGMs built by Dexcom. The startup has its own app that shows users how their body responds to specific foods, what causes their glucose to spike and after they should exercise to get the most effective results for weight loss.
On Tuesday, Signos said it closed a $20 million funding round led by Cheyenne Ventures and GV, formerly often called Google Ventures. Dexcom Ventures also contributed to the financing. Signos said it’ll use the fresh capital to proceed its research into metabolic health and to expand its team, which is currently around 45 people.
“Whether you may have five kilos to lose or 100, we wish to make sure that we’re able to help everybody,” Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, Signos’ co-founder and CEO, told CNBC in an interview.
Customers who enroll for Signos can select a one-month, three-month or six-month plan. With the half-year plan, users pay $143 a month, which incorporates the entire pricey CGMs they’ll need during that point. The corporate declined to share specific details about what number of persons are currently using its platform.
Fouladgar-Mercer said the long timelines are designed to attract users who’re serious about their weight-loss journey. Moreover, the sensors themselves have a protracted wear time. The Dexcom G6 and G7, the most recent devices, can measure glucose for up to 10 days. Signos currently supports the G6 and will soon work with the G7 as well.
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos is using Dexcom’s CGMs as a part of a clinical study approved by an institutional review board designated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to monitor biomedical research involving real people.
Fouladgar-Mercer said he created the corporate in 2018 partly due to his own struggle to manage weight throughout his life. He trained as an athlete and played hockey in college, but he said he noticed how food often affected him in a different way from the best way it affected his teammates.
He said he at all times felt that, in an effort to understand a person’s metabolism, there was a “critical component” missing, and it had been nagging at him for 30 years.
Signos helps users understand the suitable decision to make within the moment, but they will go “behind the scenes” and learn as much in regards to the science as they’d like, Fouladgar-Mercer said. Users also can integrate sleep data, heart rate data, and exercise data from their Apple Watch to personalize their profile much more.
“Once they trust the system works and they understand the methodology, they will just follow the really quick, here’s what I do, here’s what I do, here’s what I do,” Fouladgar-Mercer said. “And that is the way you get behavioral change.”
Though Dexcom primarily develops its CGMs for patients with diabetes, the corporate can also be working toward broader applications. As an example, next 12 months it’s releasing a latest product meant for individuals who aren’t taking insulin. Similarly, Abbott Laboratories, which dominates the worldwide CGM market, is hoping to bring its first consumer-facing CGM, called Lingo, to the U.S. next 12 months, adding personalized coaching with recommendations about weight loss plan, sleep and exercise.
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos has more data points than “anybody does on this planet for non-diabetics.” He added that because the company built its first product almost five years ago, it has been able to concentrate on fine-tuning its technology.
“I don’t desire to incorrectly set expectations,” Fouladgar-Mercer said. “I feel quite a lot of times, it’s like, ‘Oh, lost X kilos in X days.’ That is not what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s really, how can we put you on a sustainable journey? And that journey just isn’t going to be done in two or three days.”
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos can work well alongside Ozempic and Wegovy from Novo Nordisk and other GLP-1 treatments. Novo Nordisk’s share price has quadrupled since 2018, and the corporate is now the Most worthy in Europe.
Fouladgar-Mercer said GLP-1 drugs are a “powerful tool” that may also help people jump-start weight loss, but it will probably be difficult to keep weight off in the event that they stop taking the medication. Platforms resembling Signos may also help to reinforce and maintain a healthier lifestyle over time, he said.
Ultimately, he said, he wants people to use Signos to learn the way to make higher selections that work best for his or her bodies.
Signos, Fouladgar-Mercer said, can use technology and data “to drive behavioral change, and then wrap that every one in a system that actually is targeted on driving and solving this biggest problem we have now in America, which is weight.”
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