Novo Nordisk Affirms 25% Weight-loss Expectation for Experimental Drug CagriSema

LONDON (Reuters) -Novo Nordisk said the side effects in trials so far for its experimental obesity drug CagriSema were similar to its GLP-1 drugs already on the market, and reiterated its expectation the new injection will deliver 25% weight loss.

Martin Holst Lange, Novo Nordisk’s head of development, made the comments to Reuters after the company released better-than-expected third-quarter results.

The Danish drugmaker is due to release data from a late-stage trial of CagriSema, a two-drug combination obesity treatment that, like its popular obesity drug Wegovy, is injected, by the end of 2024.

CagriSema targets the same gut hormone as Wegovy does, but also targets a pancreas hormone called amylin.

Novo Nordisk has previously said that CagriSema has a potential of up to 25% weight loss, compared with the 15% weight loss of Wegovy.

Lange said on Wednesday the company still expects the data from its Phase 3 trial to reflect this higher weight loss.

“No change in our confidence level,” he said.

Analysts view this data as “a must-win” for Novo’s obesity-driven investment case, given the hot competition among pharma companies to deliver higher weight loss than Wegovy and Zepbound, the rival obesity injection that U.S. company Eli Lilly launched last year.

Novo’s share price could go up to 20% higher or lower depending on it, predict ABG Sundal Collier analysts.

Lange said that Novo needed to collect more data on the psychiatric side effects of another experimental obesity treatment, monlunabant, in a Phase 2b trial before it could progress to a Phase 3 or late-stage trial.

The company’s shares fell nearly 5% in September after results from a Phase 2a trial of monlunabant, a pill, came in below market expectations. Novo acquired the drug last year as part of its $1 billion purchase of Canadian biotech firm Inversago Pharmaceuticals.

Novo had already planned to conduct a Phase 2b trial even before it got the data from the latest trial, Lange said, but the Phase 2a trial did reveal new psychiatric side effects and suggests that perhaps excessively high dose strengths were tested. The new trial will involve a lower-dose strength, he said.

Monlunabant is a cannabinoid or CB1 receptor blocker. Although it has a similar effect as the GLP-1 drugs already on the market, it has a different mechanism of action.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick; Editing by Jan Harvey and Bernadette Baum)