Pfizer thinks it found its obesity pill

With tens of billions of dollars at stake, some of the world’s largest drug companies are racing to develop pills with the same power as the weight loss shots that have quickly become among the industry’s best-selling medicines. Pfizer is far behind in that race, but has now selected a new entrant it hopes will make up ground.

On Thursday, the pharmaceutical giant said it is advancing a once-daily version of an experimental and closely watched medicine called danuglipron. Pfizer based the decision on results from a small clinical trial of healthy volunteers that’s been evaluating how the body interacts with danuglipron. Studies designed to find the optimal dose of the medicine are scheduled for later this year.

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have already demonstrated the revolutionary power of GLP-1, a hormone that controls appetite and blood sugar. Their shots Wegovy or Zepbound mimic this hormone, and have been shown to lower weight by roughly 10% to 20%. In the first three months of this year, those drugs respectively generated about $1.4 billion and $518 million in sales.

Many other developers are now trying to get in on the action, with Pfizer being one of the most prominent.

Pfizer shares have lost nearly half their value since late 2022 as revenue from COVID-19 products plummeted. Under pressure to change the narrative, the company has cut costs, made leadership changes and identified weight management as a path to near-term growth. During a research and development event at the end of 2022, executives claimed danuglipron has the potential to be a $10 billion-a-year drug.

But Pfizer has struggled to make inroads on the obesity front. It scrapped a different oral GLP-1 drug last summer because of safety concerns. Then, in December, it chose not to move forward with a twice-daily version of danuglipron, also because of side effects.

A mid-stage trial found patients on that version experienced 8% to 13% greater weight reduction than those given a placebo. Yet, more than half of participants in the drug arms discontinued treatment. Pfizer said rates of diarrhea, vomiting and nausea went as high as 25%, 47% and 73%, respectively.

Despite those issues, as well as the challenge of catching up to more advanced competitors, Pfizer hasn’t given up on danuglipron — at least not yet.

Umer Raffat, an analyst at the investment firm Evercore ISI, speculates that with its update Thursday, Pfizer is “likely buying time” to see more data from a backup once-daily drug it’s been developing. “Candidly, the trial that just wrapped up never answered the question on” what dose would be effective enough to compete, he wrote in a note to clients.

“In that backdrop, the judicious thing to do from [the] Pfizer perspective was to not overcommit — and that’s exactly what they did today,” Raffat added. They “didn’t kill [danuglipron], they said it may move forward, but not right to [Phase 3].”

The move appeared to go over well with investors, as Pfizer stock rose more than 3% in Thursday morning trading. 

In his own note, Jefferies analyst Akash Tewari wrote that he and his team “don’t want to get carried away with what today’s update means.”

However, Pfizer “has one of the largest primary care sales forces in the world, and obesity is primed to be the largest pharmaceutical market in history,” he wrote. “[S]imply having a viable product that takes 5-10% market share would be a meaningful product opportunity” for Pfizer, which, between 2025 and 2030, faces $17 billion in potential revenue loss from products losing patent protection.

Louise Chen, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, argues that an “easy to manufacture oral obesity drug could take a large share” of a market that’s expected to surpass $100 billion.

This post has been syndicated from a third-party source. View the original article here.