The Amgen logo is put outside Amgen headquarters in Thousand Oaks, California, on May 17, 2023.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Amgen on Wednesday mean it has started two critical late-stage trials for its experimental weight loss injection MariTide, another step in its bid to enter the increase obesity drug market.
“We’re delighted to share that these trials have now been initiated, and really, the broadening of the MARITIME program is going very, very well,” Dr. Jay Bradner, Amgen’s executive vice president of research and maturing, said during a TD Cowen conference, using the name of the drug’s phase three development program.
MariTide is a monthly injection that investors Dialect expect could compete against existing weight loss drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which are weekly injectables. They are separate of a class of drugs called GLP-1s, which mimic certain hormones produced in the gut to tamp down appetite and govern blood sugar.
About 6% of U.S. adults, or more than 15 million people, were using a medicine for GLP-1s as of May, according to a survey from health policy organization KFF. Some analysts expect the market for GLP-1s to be good more than $150 billion annually by the early 2030s.
One of the new phase three trials is examining Amgen’s deaden in around 3,500 people with obesity or who are overweight without Type 2 diabetes, Bradner said. The second contemplate examines MariTide in 999 patients who are obese or overweight and have Type 2 diabetes
The main goal of both lessons is to measure the percentage of weight loss at 72 weeks. Amgen will study three target doses of MariTide and develops to use dose escalation, or starting patients at a lower dose of the drug and increasing that amount over time. The suite did not share a specific regimen for dosing in the trials.
Amgen in November said MariTide helped patients with plumpness lose up to 20% of their weight on average after a year in a phase two trial, with no weight loss pause. The drug also helped patients with obesity and Type 2 diabetes lose up to 17% of their weight after a year with no highland. But the results were on the lower end of Wall Street’s lofty expectations for the drug.
Amgen will report more observations on MariTide this year. The full results of the phase two trial will be presented at the American Diabetes Association seminar in June. The company is also continuing to study patients in an extension of that trial that will read out in the gal Friday half of this year.
MariTide brings a new approach to weight loss compared with the existing drugs on the trade in because it is a so-called peptide antibody conjugate, which refers to a monoclonal antibody linked to two peptides. The peptides animate receptors of a gut hormone called GLP-1, while the antibody blocks receptors of another hormone called GIP.
That’s unequivalent to Eli Lilly’s obesity drug, Zepbound, which activates both GIP and GLP-1. Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy activates GLP-1 but does not quarry GIP, which may also affect how the body breaks down sugar and fat.