Wegovy and Ozempic Owner Faces Setback as Next-Gen Weight-Loss Drug Labeled ‘Obsolete’
Novo Nordisk’s shares drop sharply after CagriSema falls short of expectations
A major blow has hit Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of popular weight loss medications Wegovy and Ozempic. The pharmaceutical firm’s long-awaited second-generation version of its popular medications, CagriSema, has been termed “obsolete” after its latest clinical trials failed to impress.
CagriSema Falls Short in Clinical Trials
The shares of Novo Nordisk crashed on Monday as the result of the trial for CagriSema not meeting market expectations. The weekly dose includes a combination of cagrilintide, which acts as a hormone just like the hormone in the pancreas, amylin, and semaglutide, which acts as a hormone just like GLP-1. This helps the users to get full earlier as well as lose more weight compared to the popular injection, Wegovy.
The trial was conducted to prove that CagriSema had the capability to compete with the popular market product for obesity treatment, Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, which includes tirzepatide. Although the users were initially looking forward to losing weight by 25% in the trial, the results showed that the users who took part in the trial, which consisted of 809 participants, lost weight by 23% after 84 weeks compared to the users who took tirzepatide, which helped them lose 25.5% weight.
Novo Nordisk Misses Primary Endpoint
The company said that CagriSema “did not achieve its primary endpoint of demonstrating non-inferiority on weight loss vs. tirzepatide after 84 weeks.”
Søren Løntoft Hansen, a senior analyst at Denmark’s AL Sydbank, said: “This is a bit of a swing and a miss, to be honest, and it’s hard to say whether this data is going to sway Novo Nordisk’s decision to launch CagriSema on the market.”
Market Reaction
Subsequently, Novo’s shares fell by 16.5% on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange, a level that is its lowest since June 2021 when Wegovy was launched. This fall brings its loss to nearly 60% this year, while Eli Lilly’s shares rose by 4.3% on Wall Street.
Recently, Novo had been enjoying booming sales of its weight loss and diabetes drugs, making it the most valuable company in Europe for a few years running. However, the company had been lowering its profit and sales forecasts as it struggled to keep up with its competitor, Eli Lilly. CagriSema, together with a new pill version of Wegovy, was meant to help Novo regain its footing.
Analysts’ Reactions
UBS had already reduced its peak sales forecast for Novo’s GLP-1 products to $75bn by 2032 from $80bn (£59bn) as investors were disappointed by the outcome of its CagriSema trial. They said, "Significant negative data and a lower efficacy outcome for tirzepatide were not anticipated.”
Emmanuel Papadakis, a Deutsche Bank analyst, said: “Commiserations on the results. CagriSema looks somewhat obsolete now as a competitive upgrade of semaglutide or as a competitive alternative to tirzepatide.”
Novo’s Response and Next Steps
Novo Nordisk's CEO Mike Doustdar defended these claims when he said, "It's quite belittling; it’s a fantastic drug in all honesty. When CagriSema hits the market early next year as the first amylin-based product, it will have the best weight loss label of any product on the market.”
The hope is that another study with a higher dose of CagriSema will demonstrate improved efficacy. CagriSema has already been submitted to US regulators for approval based on the initial trial data, with approval expected later this year.
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