Am­gen, years be­hind ri­vals, says PhI obe­si­ty drug shows dura­bil­i­ty signs

While NBC ran “The Biggest Los­er” for 17 sea­sons, deemed tox­ic by crit­ics for the re­al­i­ty show’s pun­ish­ing ex­er­cise and di­et up­heavals, re­searchers in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal labs have been at­tempt­ing to cre­ate pre­scrip­tion drugs that in­duce weight loss — and one phar­ma bet­ting it can re­quire less fre­quent dos­ing is out with a new crop of da­ta.

Am­gen was rel­a­tive­ly late to the game com­pared to its ap­proved com­peti­tor No­vo Nordisk and green light-ap­proach­ing ri­val Eli Lil­ly. But ear­ly da­ta sug­gest­ed Am­gen’s AMG 133 led to a 14.5% weight re­duc­tion in the first few months of dos­ing, buoy­ing shares ear­li­er this fall, and now the Cal­i­for­nia phar­ma is out with its first batch of dura­bil­i­ty da­ta show­ing that fig­ure fell slight­ly to 11.2% about 150 days af­ter the last dose. Am­gen pre­sent­ed at the 20th World Con­gress on In­sulin Re­sis­tance, Di­a­betes & Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Dis­ease on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

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