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An experimental once-daily pill to treat obesity can help people lose a significant amount of weight, according to new data from drugmaker Eli Lilly.
The medicine, called orforglipron, belongs to a class of blockbuster weight loss drugs known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, which work by mimicking a hormone that makes people feel full for longer.
Most GLP-1 drugs – like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro – must be injected, so pharmaceutical companies have been racing to find alternatives.
Lilly’s pill may be the first to get there. The company plans to ask regulators to approve orforglipron by the end of the year, and said it is ready to begin rolling out the medicine globally.
If it’s approved, the pill could offer “a convenient alternative to injectable treatments,” Kenneth Custer, executive vice president and president of Lilly Cardiometabolic Health, said in a statement.
The clinical trial included more than 3,100 adults who were overweight or obese and had a weight-related health problem other than patients with diabetes.
After 72 weeks, the participants taking 36mg of orforglipron per day lost an average of 12.4 kilograms, or 12.4 per cent of their body weight.
Notably, that is not as much as people on other anti-obesity medicines. In one study, for example, people taking Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy lost 13.2 per cent of their weight and those on Lilly’s Zepbound lost 20.2 per cent over 72 weeks.
But the ability to take orforglipron as a daily pill rather than an injectable jab may drive up demand.
In the study, other cardiovascular risk factors also improved for patients, including their cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure.
Orforglipron’s side effects were mostly gastrointestinal, for example, constipation, diarrhoea, and vomiting, similar to other weight loss drugs.
Simon Cork, a senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom, said the findings are a “positive step forward in the development of these class of drugs”.
Eli Lilly reported the data in a news release, and it has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The company said it will release more details next month at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).
“Obesity is one of the most pressing global health challenges of our time, driving global chronic disease burden and impacting more than one billion people worldwide,” Custer said.