By Kate Goodwin Novo Nordisk has again bought a weight-loss focused biotech, as the obesity market heats up. Announced Wednesday, the Danish pharma plans to buy Embark Biotech for $16.3 million up front with close to $500 million on the line in milestone payments—Novo’s second obesity-focused acquisition in three weeks. Novo participated in the seed round for Embark in 2017 when the biotech spun out from Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen. The company said it was founded on the discovery of a “novel target that suppresses appetite increases energy expenditure and enhances insulin sensitivity.” The acquisition announced Wednesday gives Novo full rights to develop and commercialize Embark Biotech’s lead metabolic program, currently in preclinical stages. Included is a three-year R&D collaboration with Embark Laboratories, a new company being formed by the biotech’s team to develop therapies for obesity and related conditions, with ...
Novo Nordisk has been riding the momentum of weight loss drug Wegovy ever since it stormed onto the market in 2021, creating widespread hype and even some supply shortfalls. But, now, a cardio outcomes trial could seriously change the game for the burgeoning medicine. In a large phase 3 trial, the drug cut the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events by 20% compared with placebo and standard of care, Novo said Tuesday. Specifically, investigators measured Wegovy’s 2.4-mg dose for its ability to cut the risk of a cardio death, heart attack or stroke. The trial enrolled 17,604 people and tested the drug for up to five years in people 45 and older who were overweight or obese and who had established cardiovascular disease. To be eligible for the trial, patients had to have had no history of diabetes. Based on the trial win, Novo Nordisk said it expects to seek ...
Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have officially identified a central conduit to obesity: fructose. While fructose’s contribution to obesity is well-known, a study published today in Philosophical Transactions aggregates a large amount of work to make a full argument for how fructose drives obesity and diseases such as diabetes and fatty liver disease. “This is an in-depth review on a hypothesis that puts nature at the center of weight gain, examining how fructose works differently than other nutrients by lowering active energy,” says Richard Johnson, MD, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and study lead author. “We determine a recently discovered function of fructose in survival that stores fuel in case resources become scarce. This is known as the ‘survival switch,'” he says. Fructose is the source of sweetness in fruit, but is primarily consumed in Western society as table sugar and high ...
Eli Lilly on Friday said it will acquire Versanis, a privately held obesity drug maker, for up to $1.93 billion to boost the pharmaceutical giant’s weight loss treatment portfolio. Eli Lilly agreed to pay Versanis shareholders in cash, which will consist of an upfront payment and potentially subsequent payments if Versanis achieves certain “development and sales milestones.” Oakland, California-based Versanis, which was founded in 2021 by biotech investment firm Aditum Bio, has one experimental drug for obesity and potentially other conditions. Eli Lilly’s stock price rose 3% on Friday following the announcement. The deal is Eli Lilly’s latest attempt to capitalize on the weight loss industry gold rush, which began last year after Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster injections Wegovy and Ozempic boomed in popularity. An estimated 40% of U.S. adults are obese. Analysts project that the global weight loss drug market could be worth $100 ...
Children who experience racial discrimination are more likely to later have a higher body mass index (BMI) and larger waistline, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open. The findings illustrate that racial discrimination may be a risk factor for young people developing obesity—above and beyond other socioeconomic factors such as family income. “Exposure to racial discrimination must be acknowledged as both a social determinant of obesity and a significant contributor to obesity disparities among children and adolescents,” said Adolfo Cuevas, assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at the NYU School of Global Public Health and the study’s lead author. Childhood obesity is a major public health issue in the U.S., affecting nearly one in five children and teens. Black and Hispanic youth experience even higher rates of obesity, which research shows may stem from factors such as poverty, neighborhood access to healthy foods, and single-parent households. ...
Obesity risk genes make people feel hungrier and lose control over their eating, but practicing dietary restraint could counteract this. New research by University of Exeter, Exeter Clinical Research Facility, and University of Bristol published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found that those with higher genetic risk of obesity can reduce the effects that are transmitted via hunger and uncontrolled eating by up to half through dietary restraint. Psychology Ph.D. student, Shahina Begum, from the University of Exeter is lead author and said, “At a time when high calorie foods are aggressively marketed to us, it’s more important than ever to understand how genes influence BMI. We already know that these genes impact traits and behaviors such as hunger and emotional eating, but what makes this study different is that we tested the influence of two types of dietary restraint—rigid and flexible—on the effect of these behaviors.” “What we ...
Eli Lilly’s experimental drug helped patients lose up to 24% of their weight after almost a year, the highest reduction seen in the obesity treatment space to date, according to new mid-stage clinical trial results released Monday. The phase two trial followed 338 adults who were obese or overweight and either received the pharmaceutical company’s injection, retatrutide, or a placebo each week. Patients who took a 12-milligram dose of retatrutide lost 17.5% of their body weight, or 41 pounds, on average after 24 weeks, compared with 1.6% for those who received the placebo. Patients lost 24.2%, or 58 pounds, on average after 48 weeks. Those who took the placebo lost 2.1% of their body weight after that same time period. The trial’s researchers said average weight loss did not appear to plateau after 48 weeks, suggesting a longer study could show even more. Eli Lilly is currently recruiting patients for ...
By Tristan Manalac Pictured: Pfizer sign on building/Tobias Arhelger/Adobe Stock Pfizer is discontinuing the clinical development of its investigational GLP-1 receptor agonist lotiglipron, which was being developed for obesity and Type 2 diabetes mellitus, the company announced Monday. The decision to cut lotiglipron from Pfizer’s pipeline comes after the company detected heightened concentrations of liver transaminases in patients treated with the investigational drug. Lotiglipron was being evaluated in two Phase I drug-drug interaction studies and one Phase II trial. Pharmacokinetic data from the two Phase I studies also contributed to the candidate’s discontinuation. None of the patients developed liver-related symptoms or similar side effects and neither required medical intervention. Pfizer also did not document signs of liver failure among these patients. The company will present lotiglipron data at an upcoming conference or will submit it for publication in peer-reviewed journals. With lotiglipron’s discontinuation, Pfizer will instead focus on the clinical ...
By being undiagnosed or untreated, a significant fraction of people with obesity or overweight are not getting the recommended care, despite an increase in new treatment options, according to research being presented on June 17 at ENDO 2023, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Chicago, Ill. “The number of people with obesity is high and rising in the adult U.S. population. Obesity is a complex and expensive disease that has been implicated in many chronic conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases,” said Kyrian Ezendu, Ph.D., an Eli Lilly and Company advisor on benefit-risk research. “Medications to treat obesity are an integral part of long-term care for people with excess weight and are recommended for people with obesity or people with overweight and at least one obesity-related condition.” Ezendu and colleagues used data from linked electronic health records and insurance claims of people ages 18 to 80 years ...
Brain responses to specific nutrients are diminished in individuals with obesity and are not improved after weight loss, according to a study led by Amsterdam UMC and Yale University, published today in Nature Metabolism. “Our findings suggest that long-lasting brain adaptations occur in individuals with obesity, which could affect eating behavior. We found that those with obesity released less dopamine in an area of the brain important for the motivational aspect of food intake compared to people with a healthy bodyweight. Dopamine is involved in the rewarding feelings of food intake,” says Mireille Serlie, lead researcher and Professor of Endocrinology at Amsterdam UMC. “The subjects with obesity also showed reduced responsivity in brain activity upon infusion of nutrients into the stomach. Overall, these findings suggest that sensing of nutrients in the stomach and gut and/or of nutritional signals is reduced in obesity and this might have profound consequences for food ...
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