Metabolic disorders
Viking Therapeutics’ VK2735 met Truist’s “best-case scenario,” with robust weight loss that was largely maintained when patients transitioned to less frequent dosing. Viking’s stock popped more than 30% on Tuesday.
With sales of the oral GLP-1 medicine rising quickly, executives reassured investors that Novo has secured production capacity to support continued growth.
The mid-stage readout is one link in a chain of catalysts that analysts were watching for this year from Roche’s metabolic pipeline, which features assets from the $2.7 billion acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics as well as partner Zealand Pharma.
Novo has “gone shopping” to fill pipeline gaps, with a focus on obesity and diabetes, plus an expansion in blood and endocrine disorders, liver diseases and cardiovascular conditions.
Investors and analysts have been hounding Novo to beef up its pipeline and advance new molecules as a majority of the company’s sales stem from its semaglutide franchise.
The multi-drug partnership with Orbis Medicines—which Novo Holdings has backed since the biotech’s seed rounds—is focused on cardiometabolic targets, but the technology at the center of the deal could deliver oral weight loss candidates. Obesity rival Eli Lilly has also helped fund Orbis.
Analysts tentatively welcomed Novo’s new corporate rebrand—so long as it comes with a larger change to the company’s overall business strategy.
Kura Oncology has spun out Caspian around KO-7246, which seeks to increase the number and activity of beta cells in the pancreas, in turn boosting insulin production in patients with diabetes.
Structure Therapeutics’ oral GLP-1 candidate aleniglipron showed 72-week efficacy “in line” with Novo Nordisk’s oral Wegovy, BMO Capital Markets wrote in a note to investors. Meanwhile, Structure’s amylin and calcitonin receptor agonist ACCG-2671 showed “impressive” target engagement in a Phase 1 trial of healthy volunteers, according to Leerink Partners.
Moonwalk Biosciences plans to shepherd its lead obesity asset into first-in-human trials in late 2027. In preclinical studies, MW101 has demonstrated weight loss and fat reduction while maintaining muscle mass.
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