AstraZeneca's new weight-loss pill shows promising trial results

A new pill developed by British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca appears to help people lose a similar amount of weight to other oral GLP-1 drugs, according to trial results released on Monday, News.Az reports, citing AFP.

If confirmed by further research, the pill could mark AstraZeneca’s entry into the highly lucrative weight-loss drug market, which is currently dominated by Denmark’s Novo Nordisk and US-based Eli Lilly.

The growing popularity of appetite-suppressing injectable drugs known as GLP-1 agonists has sparked a race among drugmakers to develop easier-to-take tablet versions.

AstraZeneca’s new pill, elecoglipron, produced weight loss “comparable to that reported for other oral” GLP-1 drugs, according to phase 2 trial results published in the medical journal The Lancet.

Side effects observed during the randomized trial, which involved 310 participants, were also similar to those seen with other GLP-1 pills, with nausea being the most commonly reported.

For overweight or obese adults without diabetes, the pill led to “average weight reductions of up to 10.5 percent at 26 weeks and 11.8 percent at 36 weeks in the highest-dose group,” said Marie Spreckley of the University of Cambridge.

However, the weight management researcher—who was not involved in the study—emphasized that the phase 2 trial was not primarily designed to compare the pill directly with other anti-obesity drugs.

“Larger and longer phase 3 trials will therefore be needed to confirm the durability of these effects, establish longer-term safety and tolerability, and determine its place within the growing range of obesity and diabetes treatments,” she said.

AstraZeneca faces strong competition in the market, as Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have already developed oral versions of their widely used GLP-1 drugs.

Eli Lilly’s oral form of the Mounjaro GLP-1 drug was approved in April in the United States, where it is sold under the brand name Foundayo.

Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster Wegovy pill is already available in the US and received approval from European Union health authorities last month.

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev