Build­ing on im­pres­sive da­ta, No­vo Nordisk maps big PhI­II obe­si­ty pro­gram for block­buster hope­ful semaglu­tide

En­cour­aged by ev­i­dence of the im­pact that its di­a­betes drug semaglu­tide can have on obe­si­ty, with pa­tients shed­ding an av­er­age of 16% of their weight in a mid-stage study, top re­searchers at No­vo Nordisk to­day un­veiled an am­bi­tious late-stage strat­e­gy to make their mark in a tough, but po­ten­tial­ly block­buster mar­ket.

In an R&D up­date dur­ing its Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Day at its HQ near Copen­hagen, in­ves­ti­ga­tors for the com­pa­ny said they will re­cruit 4,500 pa­tients for a Phase II­Ia obe­si­ty tri­al for semaglu­tide, a GLP-1 drug now up for a like­ly near-term ap­proval at the FDA. And they plan to launch the 68-week study next year, along­side a “land­mark” car­dio­vas­cu­lar out­comes study with 12,500 peo­ple en­rolled.

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