Roche and Zealand Pharma announced last month that their amylin analog petrelintide elicited a 9% placebo-controlled weight reduction at 42 weeks—falling far below analyst and investor expectations.
Roche is standing by its obesity asset petrelintide even after mid-stage data last month saw the amylin analog fail to outperform the reigning weight-loss champion, Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide.
“If you don’t want side effects . . . you can take a highly tolerable amylin” drug, CEO Thomas Schinecker told reporters Thursday morning during a call to present the pharma’s first-quarter 2026 earnings results. “We know that in GLP-1/GIPs, you see a third of the patients start but stop really fast again,” he added.
“This is, I think, the best benefit that petrelintide has: it’s so tolerable,” Schinecker said. This tolerability, he continued, positions petrelintide as a good option for maintenance treatment and combination regimens.
Schinecker’s comments come after Roche and obesity partner Zealand Pharma last month posted data from the Phase 2 ZUPREME-1 study, touting a 9% placebo-controlled weight reduction at 42 weeks in patients with obesity or who are overweight.
Across the board, analysts were underwhelmed by these results, with William Blair noting that they had expected at least 12% weight loss from petrelintide. The firm used as reference eloralintide, a competing amylin asset from Eli Lilly, which in a Phase 2 study cut weight by 16%—though the analysts were quick to caution against the difficulty of cross-trial comparisons.
Investors shared the disappointment and sent Zealand’s shares plummeting as much as 32% in the readout’s aftermath.
Schinecker came to petrelintide’s defense on Thursday. “It’s clearly not as high as maybe some other amylin has shown,” he said. “But weight loss is one topic, tolerability is a second topic.” In ZUPREME, only 4.8% of patients at the highest petrelintide dose dropped out of the study due to toxicities, whereas 4.9% did so in the placebo arm.
The CEO said there remains a place for amylin drugs—and petrelintide specifically—in obesity care despite the consistently superior efficacy numbers of GLP-1 drugs. “If you want to achieve a weight loss of 20%-plus,” he said during the call, “then you go for GLP-1/GIP.”
But for patients who are in need of safer, more tolerable options, there are amylin alternatives, Schinecker added.
Roche’s financial results for the first quarter are mixed. The pharma group recorded CHF 14.72 billion in revenues ($18.77 billion), which corresponds to a 5% year-on-year decline—a dip the pharma attributed to “the appreciation of the Swiss franc against most currencies, notably the U.S. dollar.” Roche’s sales for Q1 2025 were CHF 15.44 billion ($19.68 billion).
At constant currencies, Roche’s sales grew 6% year-on-year.
The company’s top-selling product was the multiple sclerosis drug Ocrevus, which in the quarter brought in nearly CHF 1.7 billion ($2.17 billion), 6% growth from the same period last year. The hemophilia A therapy Hemlibra contributed almost CHF 1.2 billion ($1.53 billion) to Roche’s topline, while the eye injection Vabysmo made CHF 1.02 billion ($1.3 billion).
