March 11, 2025 — Drug development is tricky. If you want evidence for just how tricky it is, a quick look at the experience with CagriSema will give you a pretty good idea. Yesterday, Novo Nordisk announced topline results of this drug from their REDEFINE 2 clinical trial. Their press release talked about “superior results” for people with overweight […]
February 27, 2025 — More than a decade ago, targeting amylin receptors for treating obesity looked like hot opportunity. Amylin, a peptide hormone co-secreted with insulin by pancreatic beta cells, plays a role in regulating satiety and food intake. An amylin analog, pramlintide, gained FDA approval for treating diabetes. But efforts to develop it for treating obesity never quite […]
January 25, 2025 — The race to innovate beyond semaglutide and tirzepatide for obesity can be utterly confusing. More than a hundred new drugs are in various stages of development and analysts expect more than a dozen to be launched within the next five years. But right now, all we have are tantalizing – and sometimes disappointing – results […]
December 23, 2024 — Only a little more than a month ago, Novo Nordisk told Reuters that yes, they really did expect their next generation obesity drug, CagriSema, to deliver 25% weight loss in clinical trials. Then Thursday, the company disclosed topline results of 23% weight loss. Almost immediately, company’s stock price plunged by more than 20% – a […]
June 24, 2023 — Suddenly at the ADA2023 meeting in San Diego, it seems the tides are rolling in to promise more options than ever before for treating obesity. By tides we mean all those drugs targeting the GLP-1 receptors. GLP-1 is shorthand for glucagon-like peptide 1. Most, but not all of these drugs making a splash in San […]
August 26, 2022 — Progress keeps coming in the pharmacotherapy for obesity. This week, Novo Nordisk announced that its new combination therapy of semaglutide and cagrilintide hit all its marks in a 32-week phase 2 study of patients with diabetes and excess weight. The combination – Novo is calling it CagriSema – worked better than either semaglutide or cagrilintide […]
June 24, 2022 — For decades now, Lee Kaplan and Caroline Apovian have led what was known as the Blackburn Course in Obesity Medicine every year at Harvard in June. This year, the name of the course has changed to Obesity Treatment 2022. It has moved to the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, where Richard Rothstein has joined Kaplan […]
November 20, 2021 — Lancet this week published the biggest study yet of cagrilintide – evidence that we’re seeing success in progress with more options for anti-obesity medicines. In a commentary alongside this study, Kishore Gadde and David Allison call this promising news. They point to the advantage of having a new mechanism of action for treating obesity. Also, […]
November 2, 2021 — Monday was quite an opening day for ObesityWeek 2021. Starting with the lived experience, the meeting then moved quickly into some serious science, clinical care, and policy discussions. But one of the most impressive sessions of the day gave us a “tour de force” of future options under development for obesity care. Our friend Mike […]
May 22, 2021 — Anyone following the news on progress with anti-obesity meds might have noticed a rising number of news reports about various “tides” for obesity. Liraglutide is already out there. So is setmelanotide. Semaglutide injection is under review at FDA and approval is possible as early as the middle of this year. Tirzepatide is advancing in clinical […]
