Roche weight loss drug shows promising results in early trial | Wilnesh News

Roche said on Thursday that its experimental weight-loss drug showed promising results in early-stage trials, improving the company’s competitiveness in the booming markets for these treatments.

The Swiss company spent nearly $3 billion to acquire Carmot Therapeutics in December, joining a host of drugmakers racing to develop obesity drugs. But its weekly weight-loss injection, called CT-388, is still years away from hitting the market.

The field of weight loss medications is dominated by the following treatments: Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly and CompanySome analysts say the market will be worth $100 billion by the end of the decade.

The company said Roche’s CT-388 helped obese patients lose 18.8% of their body weight after 24 weeks in the phase 1 trial, compared with those who received a placebo.

Roche added that all patients who received the drug lost more than 5% of their body weight. At the same time, 70% of them lost more than 15% of their weight, and 45% lost more than 20% of their weight.

The treatment suppresses a person’s appetite by mimicking the action of two gut hormones, GLP-1 and GIP, much like Eli Lilly’s popular weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes injection Mounjaro.

Scientists hypothesized that targeting both hormones could have meaningful effects on weight loss and blood sugar levels and have fewer side effects than drugs that only target GLP-1, such as Novo Nordisk’s weight loss drug Wegovy.

Roche’s CT-388 is being developed to treat obesity and diabetes.

Roche said it did not observe any new or unexpected side effects in patients taking CT-388. The company noted that mild to moderate gastrointestinal side effects were the most common, consistent with other weight loss and diabetes drugs that have the same effect.

CT-388 also normalized blood sugar levels in pre-diabetic patients.

Roche said it is testing CT-388 for 12 weeks in a separate group of patients with obesity and diabetes. The company expects to have data on these patients in the second half of the year.

Eli Lilly and Company’s Zepbound produced a 22% weight loss after 72 weeks, while Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy produced a 15% weight loss after 68 weeks.