Novo Nordisk Shares Take a Hit as Obesity Drug Fails to Meet Expectations
On Friday, December 20, 2024, Danish pharmaceutical titan, Novo Nordisk, experienced a significant market downturn. Its shares took a steep dive, plummeting nearly 19% due to the disappointing results of its much-anticipated next-generation obesity drug, CagriSema.
The company revealed that CagriSema, a combination therapy that pairs semaglutide (the active ingredient in Wegovy) with cagrilintide, achieved a mere 22.7% average weight loss after 68 weeks in its Phase 3 REDEFINE 1 trial. This outcome fell short of the company’s projected 25% target and failed to significantly outperform its competitor, Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, which demonstrated a 21% weight loss in its trials.
This unfortunate turn of events erased tens of billions of dollars from Novo Nordisk’s market value in a single day. Martin Holst Lange, the Executive Vice President for Development at Novo Nordisk, expressed that the company remains “encouraged by the weight loss profile” and intends to “further explore the additional weight loss potential of CagriSema“. However, the fact that only 57.3% of patients in the trial reached the highest dose suggests that dosing challenges may have influenced the results.
The trial encompassed 3,417 participants who were either obese or overweight with comorbidities, and had a mean baseline body weight of 106.9 kg. The results from a second pivotal Phase 3 trial, REDEFINE 2, which focuses on adults with type 2 diabetes, are anticipated in the first half of 2025.
Source: Novo Nordisk