Weight reduction has at all times been big business, nevertheless it’s exploded of late attributable to surging demand for Ozempic, Wegovy and other recent diabetes and obesity drugs.
In the primary half of 2023, sales of Ozempic and Wegovy rose by 58% and 363%, respectively. That is after quarterly prescriptions for those sorts of GLP-1 treatments, which mimic a hormone within the gut to suppress an individual’s appetite, increased 300% between early 2020 and the top of last 12 months.
But as consumers and businesses pour more cash and resources into tackling the obesity epidemic, which costs the U.S. greater than $170 billion a 12 months, drug developers aren’t alone in coming up with modern solutions.
Signos, a five-year-old startup, is taking an approach that does not involve pills.
The corporate is using off-the-shelf continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, and providing real-time weight-reduction plan and exercise recommendations based on a person’s readings. CGMs are small sensors worn on the upper arm that track glucose levels, primarily for individuals with diabetes. The data is wirelessly sent to a smartphone, allowing the user to raised prevent emergencies.
Signos uses CGMs built by Dexcom. The startup has its own app that shows users how their body responds to specific foods, what causes their glucose to spike and once they should exercise to get one of the best results for weight reduction.
On Tuesday, Signos said it closed a $20 million funding round led by Cheyenne Ventures and GV, formerly generally known as Google Ventures. Dexcom Ventures also contributed to the financing. Signos said it’s going to use the fresh capital to proceed its research into metabolic health and to expand its team, which is currently around 45 people.
“Whether you’ve got five kilos to lose or 100, we wish to ensure that we’re capable of help everybody,” Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, Signos’ co-founder and CEO, told CNBC in an interview.
Customers who enroll for Signos can select a one-month, three-month or six-month plan. With the half-year plan, users pay $143 a month, which incorporates all the pricey CGMs they’ll need during that point. The corporate declined to share specific details about what number of persons are currently using its platform.
Fouladgar-Mercer said the long timelines are designed to draw users who’re serious about their weight-loss journey. Moreover, the sensors themselves have a protracted wear time. The Dexcom G6 and G7, the newest devices, can measure glucose for as much as 10 days. Signos currently supports the G6 and can soon work with the G7 as well.
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos is using Dexcom’s CGMs as a part of a clinical study approved by an institutional review board designated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to watch biomedical research involving real people.
Fouladgar-Mercer said he created the corporate in 2018 partly due to his own struggle to administer weight throughout his life. He trained as an athlete and played hockey in college, but he said he noticed how food often affected him otherwise from the way in which it affected his teammates.
He said he at all times felt that, in an effort to grasp a person’s metabolism, there was a “critical component” missing, and it had been nagging at him for 30 years.
Signos helps users understand the appropriate decision to make within the moment, but they will go “behind the scenes” and learn as much concerning the science as they’d like, Fouladgar-Mercer said. Users may also integrate sleep data, heart rate data, and exercise data from their Apple Watch to personalize their profile much more.
“Once they trust the system works they usually understand the methodology, they will just follow the really quick, here’s what I do, here’s what I do, here’s what I do,” Fouladgar-Mercer said. “And that is the way you get behavioral change.”
Though Dexcom primarily develops its CGMs for patients with diabetes, the corporate can also be working toward broader applications. For example, next 12 months it’s releasing a recent product meant for individuals who aren’t taking insulin. Similarly, Abbott Laboratories, which dominates the worldwide CGM market, is hoping to bring its first consumer-facing CGM, called Lingo, to the U.S. next 12 months, adding personalized coaching with recommendations about weight-reduction plan, sleep and exercise.
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos has more data points than “anybody does on this planet for non-diabetics.” He added that for the reason that company built its first product almost five years ago, it has been capable of concentrate on fine-tuning its technology.
“I don’t need to incorrectly set expectations,” Fouladgar-Mercer said. “I feel a variety of times, it’s like, ‘Oh, lost X kilos in X days.’ That is not what we’re trying to perform. It’s really, how can we put you on a sustainable journey? And that journey is just not going to be done in two or three days.”
Fouladgar-Mercer said Signos can work well alongside Ozempic and Wegovy from Novo Nordisk and other GLP-1 treatments. Novo Nordisk’s share price has quadrupled since 2018, and the corporate is now the Most worthy in Europe.
Fouladgar-Mercer said GLP-1 drugs are a “powerful tool” that will help people jump-start weight reduction, but it might be difficult to maintain weight off in the event that they stop taking the medication. Platforms similar to Signos will help to strengthen and maintain a healthier lifestyle over time, he said.
Ultimately, he said, he wants people to make use of Signos to learn find out how to make higher decisions that work best for his or her bodies.
Signos, Fouladgar-Mercer said, can use technology and data “to drive behavioral change, after which wrap that every one in a system that basically is targeted on driving and solving this biggest problem we’ve got in America, which is weight.”
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