\n<\/p>\n
The owner of Wegovy and Ozempic has suffered a significant setback, as its highly anticipated new weight-loss treatment was labelled \u201cobsolete\u201d after disappointing clinical trials.<\/p>\n
Novo Nordisk\u2019s shares fell sharply on Monday after the results from testing the Danish firm\u2019s CagriSema drug fell short of investors\u2019 expectations.<\/p>\n
The weekly injection combines an amylin analogue with GLP-1 to regulate the metabolism, suppressing appetite and making users feel full more quickly. This means CagriSema was expected to lead to greater weight loss than Novo\u2019s hugely popular Wegovy and Ozempic GLP-1 jabs.<\/p>\n
The study was designed to show that CagriSema is at least as good as Novo rival Eli Lilly\u2019s leading anti-obesity drug Zepbound, which contains tirzepatide.<\/p>\n
Against initial expectations of 25% weight loss, CagriSema disappointed in a late-state study involving 809 people. It led to average weight loss of 23% after 84 weeks if all people adhered to treatment, compared with 25.5% for tirzepatide.<\/p>\n
The new Novo treatment \u201cdid not achieve its primary endpoint of demonstrating non-inferiority on weight loss for CagriSema compared to tirzepatide after 84 weeks\u201d, the company said on Monday.<\/p>\n
S\u00f8ren L\u00f8ntoft Hansen, a senior analyst at AL Sydbank, told Marketwire: \u201cThis is something of a swing and a miss.\u201d He added: \u201cIt is difficult to assess whether this data will influence Novo Nordisk\u2019s decision to launch Cagrisema on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Novo\u2019s share price plunged 16% on the news, taking its losses over the past year to nearly 60%, while Lilly\u2019s stock rose by more than 3% in pre-market trading.<\/p>\n
Novo, which had recorded booming sales of weight-loss and diabetes medications, turning it into Europe\u2019s most valuable company in recent years, has slashed its profit and sales estimates several times, as it lost ground to Lilly. Novo had been betting on CagriSema \u2013 as well as its new Wegovy pill \u2013 to revive sales.<\/p>\n
Analysts at UBS had already, in January, lowered their peak sales forecast for Novo\u2019s GLP-1 drugs from $80bn (\u00a359bn) to $75bn in 2032, following previous disappointing CagriSema trial results.<\/p>\n
They said on Monday of the latest results: \u201cSignificant negative. An inferior result to tirzepatide was very unexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCommiserations on the results,\u201d Emmanuel Papadakis at Deutsche Bank told Novo management on an investor call. \u201cCagriSema looks somewhat obsolete now as a competitive upgrade of semaglutide \u2026 or as a competitive alternative to tirzepatide.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Novo chief executive, Mike Doustdar, rejected the comments, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s quite belittling, it\u2019s a fantastic drug in all honesty. When CagriSema will make it to the market early next year as the first amylin-based product, it will have the best weight loss label [of] any marketed product.\u201d<\/p>\n
Novo hopes that another trial of a higher CagriSema dose will show better results. It has already submitted the medication to the US drug regulator for approval based on earlier trial evidence, and hopes for the green light later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The owner of Wegovy and Ozempic has suffered a significant setback, as its highly anticipated new weight-loss treatment was labelled \u201cobsolete\u201d after disappointing clinical trials. Novo Nordisk\u2019s shares fell sharply on Monday after the results from testing the Danish firm\u2019s CagriSema drug fell short of investors\u2019 expectations. The weekly injection combines an amylin analogue with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[4045,7382,21859,252,1545,12531,23253,2070,9299,6680,15606,1474],"class_list":{"0":"post-45029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-blow","9":"tag-branded","10":"tag-dealt","11":"tag-drug","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-nextgen","14":"tag-obsolete","15":"tag-owner","16":"tag-ozempic","17":"tag-pharmaceuticals","18":"tag-wegovy","19":"tag-weightloss"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}