November 25, 2025 — Novo Nordisk made a bold gamble on oral semaglutide for delaying the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Yesterday, as can happen with bold gambles, it did not pay off. A daily 14 mg oral dose of semaglutide was no better than placebo for preventing disease progression as measured by the Clinical Dementia Rating – Sum of […]
September 27, 2025 — Bimagrumab continues to be a enigma. We see flickering signs of good news – and then, inexplicably, it goes dark. The pattern repeated itself this week when news emerged that Lilly pulled the plug on a phase two study with bimagrumab and tirzepatide in persons with obesity and diabetes before it even enrolled a single […]
September 22, 2025 — Yesterday Pfizer announced a $7.3 billion deal to buy Metsera, a company with an impressive obesity drugs portfolio. Roche, having spent $2.7 billion to acquire Carmot in 2023 and $1.6 billion in March on a deal with Zealand, yesterday confirmed its intent to spend everything it takes to become a market leader in obesity. “We […]
August 27, 2025 — It’s entertaining in a perverse way. Cluelessness about the potential of orforglipron is impossible to miss in the news about Lilly’s new oral GLP-1 medicine for obesity this month. The company announced topline results from the first of two pivotal studies for this medicine on August 7 and investors decided the drug was a dud. […]
August 18, 2025 — We have a flourishing market for new obesity drugs. But that market has a problem. New drug developers are stumbling over what to target with their drugs. The old way of looking at goals for new drugs in this space was to aim for greater weight loss. More is better – right? In a new […]
June 26, 2025 — Stepping back from the intense swirl of obesity care research at the ADA meeting just concluded, one thing stands out: People are having a very hard time following the thread of all this innovation. If you have any doubt, just scan the reports of investment analysts at the meeting. On one hand, they know they […]
June 19, 2025 — In drug therapy for obesity, all of the excitement about GLP-1s and now amylin analogs has focused on regulation of eating behaviors. But, in fact, this is just one part of the process for regulating metabolic function and adiposity. Until now, we have seen little success in developing safe and effective medicines that alter the […]
June 14, 2025 — As the upcoming Scientific Sessions for the American Diabetes Association draws closer, the drumbeat for amycretin as a promising new therapy for obesity is growing louder. At the meeting, Novo Nordisk plans to present two different studies to strengthen the case for this novel dual agonist. It targets both GLP-1 and amylin receptors. Then yesterday […]
May 3, 2025 — Rather quietly this week, Eli Lilly and Company announced that it had withdrawn an application to FDA for an indication to use tirzepatide (Zepbound) in treating heart failure – specifically for HFpEF. This news came up in a briefing for investors, with Lilly’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dan Skovronsky, saying: “Following discussions with the FDA, we’ve […]
April 18, 2025 — The news in obesity research these days is so full of headlines about a multitude of new medicines in development that it is easy to lose count. All too often, these are early stage or even pre-clinical notions of a potential treatment. So yesterday, it was good news indeed to hear that a once-daily oral […]
