Novo Nordisk says high doses of an experimental obesity pill lead to 15 percent weight loss

Novo Nordiskexperimentally with high doses an anti-obesity pill it has now helped overweight or obese adults lose about 15% of their body weight results of late-stage clinical trials.

The Danish company presented the data on a diabetes conference Sunday. Novo Nordisk told Reuters intends to invest Food and Drug Administration drug approval later this year.

Novo Nordisk is fighting to maintain its dominant position in a booming market for weight loss drugs like new contestants like Eli Lilly and Pfizer develop their own effective treatments.

Novo Nordisk’s tablets are an oral version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in the company’s successful weight-loss injections Ozempic and Wegovy. Semaglutide mimics a hormone produced in the gut called GLP-1 that signals the brain when a person is full.

Novo Nordisk already has an FDA-approved oral semaglutide marketed under the brand name Rybelsus to treat type 2 diabetes. But Rybelsus’ maximum dose is 14 milligrams, while the company’s experimental obesity pill has a much higher dose of 50 milligrams.

The phase 3 trial followed 667 obese and overweight adults who did not have type 2 diabetes.

Patients who took a 50-milligram pill once a day for 68 weeks lost an average of 15.1% of their weight when used along with diet and exercise, Novo Nordisk reported. This compares to 2.4% in patients taking placebo.

About 85% of patients taking the pill lost at least 5% of their body weight, compared to only 26% of those taking the placebo.

Weight loss also led to “improvements in physical functioning, providing participants with an improved quality of life for daily activities,” says Dr. Philip Knopprofessor of endocrinology at the University of Copenhagen, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

The new data suggests that the high-dose pill may be as effective as Novo Nordisk’s weekly injection of Wegovy, which also caused about 15% weight loss after 68 weeks.

But a pill would be a much more convenient way to treat obesity.

Knop said that offering the pill to the public “would allow people who are struggling to lose weight through diet and exercise alone to take this effective drug in the way that works best for them.”

Other companies are also developing oral weight loss treatments to appeal to those who don’t want weekly injections.

Overweight or obese patients who took Eli Lilly’s experimental pill orforglipron lost 14.7% of their body weight after 36 weeks, according to mid-stage clinical trial results the company announced Friday.

Pfizer is also developing its own weight loss pill, danugliprone, which patients take twice a day.

But the pharmaceutical giant said on Monday that it would stop development his other experimental oral drug, lotiglipronedue to elevated liver enzymes in patients.

Companies have begun to focus more on the weight loss industry after Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy were catapulted into the national spotlight in recent years.

Social media influencers, Hollywood celebrities and even a billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk are supposed to use popular injections to get rid of unwanted weight.

This popularity triggered a general shortage and increase cheaper copies medicines.

Shortages and other factors, such as high out-of-pocket costs without insurance or unpleasant side effects, have forced some people to stop taking Ozempic or Wegovy. Many users have complained weight gain that is difficult to control.

More than two out of five adults are obese, according to the National Institutes of Health. About one in 11 adults is severely obese.