What are the new rivals of Ozempic and Wegovy? – The financial

Novo and Lilly are leading now with drugs that mimic glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1, a hormone the body releases naturally after a meal. But there are multiple drug candidates waiting in the wings that could disrupt that duopoly in the future.

Here’s a look at some of the most promising rival drugs.

What are the weight loss drugs that compete with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly?

MariTide, Amgen’s two-component drug, which includes an antibody-drug conjugate, works differently than Wegovy or Zepbound and is taken monthly, rather than weekly. An initial study showed that patients lost up to 14.5 percent of their body weight in 12 weeks.

Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH and Zealand Pharma are collaborating on a weekly obesity vaccine that mimics the hormone glucagon, which regulates blood sugar, as well as GLP-1.

Boehringer is testing the drug, known as survodutide, for liver disease, with promising midterm results this year, as well as in obesity.

Viking Therapeutics, based in La Jolla, California, is developing a weight-loss pill and injection. An initial study on the pill showed that patients lost an average of 3.3 percent of their body weight in 28 days compared to a placebo.

Another study on the injection showed that patients lost up to 14.7 percent of their weight in 13 weeks. The shot just completed phase 2 studies, while the pill moves into mid-stage testing.

Adds Altimmune’s drug pemvidutide, which combines GLP-1 with a hormone called glucagon and has been shown to help patients lose as much weight as Wegovy.

He also minimized the muscle deterioration, a side effect of weight loss injections, in a mid-stage trial. The company will meet with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the second half of the year to chart a path forward.

Results from an early-stage trial of the oral weight-loss drug Structure Therapeuticsknown as GSBR-1290, showed that obese patients lost about 4.9 percent of their weight and none of them had to stop the drug due to side effects.

AstraZeneca is developing an experimental anti-obesity pill with Chinese biotech Eccogene that it claims will could potentially be cheaper than current injections very successful.

Known only as ECC5004, The oral pill is in an early testing stage and is “many years away from being marketed,” according to John Murphy and Sam Fazeli of BloombergIntelligence.

Finally, Pfizer joins in, which suspended a version twice a year day of your weight loss pill danuglipron last year, after studies showed high rates of side effects such as nausea and vomiting.

The drugmaker is now in the early stages of testing a once-daily version and expects to share data on it this year.