June 5 (Reuters) – Zealand Pharma said on Friday its experimental obesity drug, co-developed with Swiss partner Roche, showed encouraging tolerability in a mid-stage trial, bolstering its push to take on market leaders with a potentially gentler alternative to existing blockbuster treatments.
Here are some details:
• Denmark’s Zealand said only 1.5% of patients who received once-weekly subcutaneous injections of the drug, petrelintide, discontinued treatment due to gastrointestinal side effects, based on results presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting in New Orleans.
• Most gastrointestinal side effects, including nausea and vomiting, were mild.
• About 19.6% of patients experienced nausea and 3% reported vomiting, compared with 6.2% in the placebo group. Fewer than 7.5% of patients in both groups reported diarrhea or constipation.
• Petrelintide also improved key cardiovascular risk factors, including reducing levels of a protein linked to inflammation, lowering waist circumference and triglycerides, a type of fat, more than placebo.
• Zealand had reported in March that petrelintide drove weight loss of up to 10.7% over 42 weeks in a 493-patient study.
• Those results, however, fell short of investor expectations, erasing billions of dollars from the company’s market value after trailing data of a rival amylin-based candidate from Eli Lilly showed up to 20.1% weight loss in a comparable mid-stage trial.
• Zealand is seeking to break into the lucrative obesity drug market, betting that its medicines could offer fewer and less severe side effects than blockbuster treatments Zepbound and Wegovy from market leaders Lilly and Novo Nordisk .
• Unlike Wegovy and Zepbound, which target the GLP-1 hormone to reduce appetite, amylin-based drugs such as petrelintide, activate receptors in the brain and slow gastric emptying with the potential for less severe side effects and preservation of muscle.
• Roche gained access to petrelintide through an up to $5.3 billion collaboration and licensing deal last year.
(Reporting by Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)
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