A logo at the headquarters of Roche Holding AG in Basel, Switzerland, Thursday, February 1, 2024.
Bloomberg | fake images
Roche It said Thursday that its experimental weight-loss drug showed promising results in an early-stage trial, boosting the company's bid to compete in the booming market for such treatments.
The Swiss company joined a list of drugmakers racing to develop anti-obesity drugs through its nearly $3 billion acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics in December. But its weekly weight-loss injection, called CT-388, is still years away from hitting the market.
The weight loss drug space is dominated by Nordisk and Eli Lillyand some analysts say the market will be worth $100 billion by the end of the decade.
Roche's CT-388 helped obese patients lose 18.8% of their weight compared to those who received a placebo after 24 weeks in the phase one trial, the company said.
Roche added that all patients who received the drug lost more than 5% of their weight. Meanwhile, 70% of those people lost more than 15% of their weight and 45% lost more than 20%.
The treatment works by mimicking the effect of two gut hormones (GLP-1 and GIP) to suppress a person's appetite, much like Eli Lilly's popular weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes injection Mounjaro.
Scientists have hypothesized that targeting those two hormones could have a significant effect on weight loss and blood sugar levels with fewer side effects than drugs that only target GLP-1, such as weight loss treatment Wegovy weight from Novo Nordisk.
Roche's CT-388 is being developed to treat both obesity and diabetes.
Roche said it did not observe any new or unexpected side effects in patients taking CT-388. The company noted that mild to moderate gastrointestinal side effects were the most common, which is consistent with other weight loss and diabetes medications that work in the same way.
CT-388 also normalized blood sugar levels in a subgroup of patients with prediabetes.
Roche said it is testing CT-388 in an additional group of patients with obesity and diabetes for 12 weeks. The company expects data from those patients in the second half of the year.
Eli Lilly's Zepbound achieved up to 22% weight loss after 72 weeks, while Novo Nordisk's Wegovy produced 15% weight loss after 68 weeks.
