Pfizer stops developing his weight loss pill – Diepresse.com
The US group stops its oral anti-adiposity therapy-and continues to lose ground in the race against Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.
In the struggle for the highly competitive market for obesity medication, the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer has suffered a setback and set the development of a weight loss pill. The drug candidate named Danuglipron was associated with a perhaps medication -related liver damage in a patient in a clinical study, as Pfizer announced. For this reason, the company will not bring the drug to be taken daily in the last test phase and instead invest in treatments in early stages in treatments.
For Pfizer, the failure is a serious setback in his efforts to compete with the successful weight loss syringes from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. The company has made the competition on the obesity market a central component of its comeback plan after Corona pandemic: While the demand for coronavirus vaccines and therapies wanes, business with the sale of medicinal products is booming. It is estimated that the market could grow up around $ 130 billion (114 billion euros) by the end of the decade.
Shares are already reacting
Pfizer’s shares fell by around one percent in pre -exchangeable New York trade at the beginning of the week, while the papers of competitors Novo Nordisk increased by 4.6 percent and Eli Lilly by 2.3 percent. The US Biotech company Viking Therapeutics, which also works on an obesity pill, rose by 20 percent in pre-exchanging trading.
Previously, however, Pfizer was already behind the competition: Eli Lilly-whose weight loss injection is administered once a week and quickly reached annual turnover of almost five billion dollars after the US approval in 2023-also has an oral drug in the final phase of development. AstraZeneca and Structure Therapeutics also develop their own oral medication.
Pfizer had to stop the development of a version of Danuglipron two times a day after patients had stopped a study with around 1,400 participants in the middle study stage due to frequent nausea and inheritance. Months earlier, the company had given up another oral obesity medication that had shown worrying effects on the liver in a clinical study.
Loss of $ 15 billion
Pfizer’s decision could be a relief for some investors who had doubts as to whether Danuglipron could compete with other obesity medication. The setting of the weight loss pill could also cause Pfizer to search for takeover options. In any case, the results will increase the pressure on Pfizer boss Albert Bourla, who has repeatedly pointed out that the product pipeline of the pharmaceutical company is a undervalued source of future growth. It is expected that the company will lose around $ 15 billion in sales by the end of the decade, since important medication will lose their patent protection.
A number of acquisitions worth several billion dollars have not yet produced new blockbusters, and Pfizer’s internal product pipeline has also produced little exciting. The company’s shares have fallen by more than 60 percent since its climax during Corona pandemic in 2021. (Bloomberg)
