The decision to pause dapiglutide will help Zealand focus investment into assets that have “the greatest potential for clinical differentiation” in obesity.
Zealand Pharmaceutical has paused the development of its investigational GLP-1/GLP-2 drug obesity drug dapiglutide in an effort to stand out in the crowded obesity market.
The pause was driven by its “active portfolio management,” the Danish biotech said on Thursday during an earnings report. Zealand intends to focus its capital “on programs with the greatest potential for clinical differentiation and long-term value creation.” In that vein, the company is going “full speed” with its two most mature obesity assets: the GLP-1/glucagon receptor dual-agonist survodutide, which is being developed in partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim, and the amylin analog petrelinitide, in development with Roche.
Zealand is expecting two Phase III topline readouts for survodutide in the first half of 2026 while petrelinitide is approaching Phase II data drops both in the front and back halves of 2026. The petrelinitide program is also set to enter late-stage development in the latter part of next year.
Unlike these two assets, dapiglutide is wholly owned by Zealand. Dapiglutide works by activating both the GLP-1 and GLP-2 receptors to not only elicit the weight-loss effects of the GLP-1 pathway, but to also address comorbidities related to low-grade inflammation using the GLP-2 pathway.
In the investigator-led DREAM study, a 6-mg dose of dapiglutide led to a 4.3% reduction in body weight from baseline at 12 weeks, versus 2.2% with placebo, according to a May 2024 readout. No dietary or lifestyle interventions were implemented. While this effect did not meet statistical significance, Zealand’s Chief Medical Officer David Kendall said at the time that the company was “encouraged” by these results.
Then, in June this year, Phase Ib data showed that dapiglutide could lower body weight by 11.6% after 28 weeks. Reacting to this readout in a June 19 note, analysts at William Blair flagged the study’s “atypical patient characteristics”—more than 90% of participants were male and had a relatively low baseline weight.
Zealand had previously planned to put dapiglutide in a Phase IIb study sometime in 2025.
“Given that females tend to experience a greater degree of weight loss, the reported weight loss may provide an underrepresentation of the degree of weight loss that could be observed in a more representative population,” the analysts said at the time.
Zealand is partnered with two pharma powerhouses for obesity drug development. Boehringer Ingelheim enlisted the biotech in 2011 in a potential $530 million deal. Roche inked a partnership in March this year, fronting $1.6 billion and pledging up to $1.2 billion in development and $2.4 billion in sales milestones.
