Amgen has launched a late-stage program to test the feasibility of switching patients from weekly GLP-1 injections to its own investigational obesity asset MariTide, which could open up monthly or more infrequent dosing schedules.
In the lucrative and increasingly competitive obesity arena, Amgen isn’t looking to play third fiddle to Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Instead, the California–based pharma is looking to chart a new paradigm with its weight-loss candidate MariTide, providing patients with not just efficacy but also convenience.
“I think we are going to be the best monthly or less frequently dosed agent [in obesity],” Murdo Gordon, executive vice president of Amgen’s global commercial operations, told investors during the company’s first quarter earnings call Thursday afternoon.
To build the case for MariTide as a top monthly weight-loss option, Amgen launched the Phase 3 MARITIME-Switch study in the first quarter, focusing on patients that are already on weekly GLP-1 treatment, according to a company presentation. “In other words, we will evaluate switching from medicines which are injected 52 times a year to one which can be injected as few as four or six times a year,” CEO Robert Bradway explained on the call.
Amgen is also running late-stage programs for MariTide in type 2 diabetes, heart failure and obstructive sleep apnea.
These studies, according to Gordon, will position MariTide as an alternative obesity treatment for patients who want to try something new.
“Whether they are de novo patients who have yet to attempt a weight loss treatment and they will be new to MariTide, or whether they are on another therapy and they are not achieving the results they like, or they are not enjoying the frequency of injections, or they are having side effects and they want to try another treatment,” he said on the call.
“We will, across the business, across the company, be ready to go into that market and compete with all of the other companies that are already there,” Gordon said.
MariTide is a bispecific antibody-peptide that works by simultaneously activating the GLP-1 pathway while also disrupting GIP. Amgen has previously claimed that this mechanism not only triggers weight loss but also helps patients keep the pounds off after stopping treatment. Unlike the currently approved treatments, which are dosed weekly for injectables or taken daily for pills, MariTide is, at its most frequent schedule, a monthly injection.
In November 2024, Amgen unwrapped Phase 2 data for MariTide, touting an up to 20% reduction in body weight at 52 weeks, an effect that fell on the lower end of what investors had been expecting. Analysts were underwhelmed. Still, the pharma remains confident in the asset, with Gordon on Thursday playing up the “paradigm-changing opportunity” that MariTide presents in the obesity market.
Amgen management on the call also described high-level results from a Phase 1 study evaluating a three-step dose escalation of the drug, according to a Friday note from William Blair.
“We are encouraged by the additional tidbits on the call on MariTide,” the analysts said, “including the improved tolerability with three-step dose escalation and the initiation of a new switch study, which we believe would support uptake.”
Amgen clocked $8.6 billion in first quarter revenues, up 6% year-on-year. Based on first quarter sales, the pharma could have 17 blockbuster products this year and annual sales hitting at least $1 billion, according to a company release on Thursday. These include the lipid-lowering drug Repatha, which emerged as Amgen’s best-selling product at $876 million worldwide—a 34% year-on-year growth.
Other top-performing drugs included the osteoporosis drugs Evenity and Prolia, which brought in $562 million and $727 million, respectively.
