Boehringer Ingelheim, Terns, Viking may join market

Drugmakers have been scrambling to hitch a two-horse race to steer the marketplace for popular weight reduction drugs, which could possibly be price tens of billions in lower than a decade.

Demand is just expected to grow, leaving room within the segment for lesser-known weight reduction drug hopefuls comparable to the privately held German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim and smaller public corporations comparable to Terns Pharmaceuticals, Viking Therapeutics and Structure Therapeutics.

The subsequent entrants into the booming market have a key window of opportunity in the approaching years: Goldman Sachs analysts expect 15 million U.S. adults to be on obesity medications by 2030.

Throughout the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco last week, attendees flocked to listen to Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly – the 2 dominant players in the burden loss drug space – discuss what to anticipate this yr from their blockbuster weight reduction drugs. Demand for those treatments soared, and so they slipped into shortages during the last yr, as they helped patients shed significant weight over time.

Other large drugmakers comparable to Pfizer — which has a widely followed but to date ill-fated weight reduction drug program — Amgen, Roche and AstraZeneca also outlined their strategies for joining the market. 

But other corporations with weight reduction drug ambitions have garnered less attention throughout the recent weight reduction drug industry gold rush. They could soon compete with the larger players.

Listed below are among the lesser-known businesses angling to enter the market.

Boehringer Ingelheim is developing a weight reduction drug with Danish biotech firm Zealand Pharma. That company has been working on obesity treatments for nearly a decade. 

Their experimental drug works by targeting two gut hormones: GLP-1 to suppress appetite, and glucagon to extend energy expenditure. Some popular weight reduction drugs comparable to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy only goal GLP-1. 

Boehringer Ingelheim in August said it was moving the drug, called survodutide, right into a late-stage study, bringing it one step closer to potential Food and Drug Administration approval. A mid-stage trial found patients who’re obese or have obesity lost as much as 19% of their weight after 46 weeks of treatment with the drug. 

That weight reduction could possibly be closer to twenty% to 25% in a phase three trial, Zealand Pharma said ahead of the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference last week. It’s unclear when that product could win approval. 

The corporate is conducting an early-stage trial examining its oral weight reduction drug, which works by targeting GLP-1, in patients who’re obese or obese. Oral drugs will likely be easier for patients to take and for corporations to fabricate in comparison with the present weight reduction injections.

Terns Pharmaceuticals expects to release initial 28-day data from that trial within the second half of 2024, the corporate’s head of research and development, Erin Quirk, said throughout the conference. 

Quirk acknowledged that it could be difficult for Terns to set its pill aside from other weight reduction drugs. But she added that “even when it is not the very best…analysts are on the market predicting that this could possibly be $100 billion market. In case you get a 1% piece of that, that is a $1 billion drug, right?”

Viking Therapeutics expects to release mid-stage trial data on its weight reduction injection in the primary half of the yr. An early-stage study on that drug showed that it caused as much as 7.8% weight reduction after 28 days.

The corporate can also be slated to release phase one trial data on an oral version of its weight reduction drug throughout the first quarter of the yr. 

Structure Therapeutics is similarly developing an obesity pill, which missed Wall Street’s expectations for weight reduction in a mid-stage trial last month. 

The oral drug helped obese patients lose roughly 5% of their weight in comparison with patients who received a placebo after eight weeks. Before that data was published, Jefferies analyst Roger Song had said he was expecting 6% to 7% weight reduction relative to a placebo. 

Structure said it expects full 12-week results on patients with obesity within the second quarter of this yr. The corporate plans to launch a bigger mid-stage study within the second half of 2024 and a late-stage trial in 2026. 

Some large drugmakers signaled that they might eventually move to enter the burden loss drug market. 

That features French company Sanofi, whose own GLP-1 drug failed a mid-stage trial almost half a decade ago. In the approaching years, the corporate could have a look at potential “next-generation” weight reduction drugs that would have benefits over the present treatments, comparable to fewer uncomfortable side effects, executives told industry news publication Endpoint News on the JPMorgan Healthcare conference.

“There’s a variety of determination in corporations, including ours to say, the primary wave goes to be this, what is the second wave going to be?” said Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson. 

Meanwhile, Bayer‘s pharmaceuticals head Stefan Oelrich said in an interview throughout the conference that the corporate is hesitant to enter the obesity market by itself, nevertheless it may partner with other corporations.