AstraZeneca plans to develop treatment options for people with different BMIs as part of its “very ambitious” obesity strategy.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot on Thursday detailed the company’s plans, which include launching two mid-stage trials by the end of the year.
During the second-quarter earnings call, Soriot said that AstraZeneca is taking a “holistic” approach to weight management, noting that the company has been building a pipeline of related conditions such as hypertension and kidney disease “for quite some time.” He added that its three early-stage candidates could each achieve $5 billion in peak sales, calling it a “very important franchise” for the British drugmaker.
Large pharma companies and small biotechs alike are racing to challenge Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound in obesity, with some reporting promising mid-stage and early results in recent months.
Also on Thursday, Roche announced plans to accelerate its obesity pipeline, while Viking Therapeutics said Wednesday that it plans to forgo a Phase 2b study for its GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist and head right into Phase 3.
Sharon BarrSharon Barr, AstraZeneca’s EVP of biopharmaceuticals, said the company expects to have an update on Phase 1 progress later this year for AstraZeneca’s GLP-1 glucagon agonist and long-acting amylin programs: AZD9550 and AZD6234, respectively. It also is preparing to share the full Phase 1 results for AZD5004, the oral once-daily GLP-1 receptor agonist that AstraZeneca licensed from Eccogene late last year for $185 million upfront and up to $1.8 billion in potential milestones.
The company “saw no red flags in that study,” according to Barr, and it plans to launch two Phase 2b studies for AZD5004 later this year, one in type 2 diabetes and one in obesity.
Soriot said AstraZeneca sees two distinct markets within obesity: one for lower BMI patients who still need to lose weight, and one for patients with a higher BMI. Lower BMI patients “need a simple regimen,” he said, while higher BMI patients may need higher doses of GLP-1 or combinations to “improve the quality of weight loss.”
“We have a plan for all those segments. We are ready to go,” he said. “Phase 2 will start very soon, and then as soon as we have the results, of course, we unlock Phase 3.”