June 14, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
NEW ORLEANS – Shares of Novo Nordisk A/S are down more than 5 percent this morning after the company revealed its diabetes drug Victoza reduced the risk of stroke, heart attack or cardiovascular death by13 percent – which was less than analysts had hoped.
Denmark-based Novo Nordisk revealed the results of its latest trial at the American Diabetes Association’s 76th meeting in Louisiana. While Novo Nordisk touted the results of the Victoza trial, analysts had been expecting stronger results. Jo Walton, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, said they were underwhelmed by the results, Bloomberg reported. Jeffrey Holford, an analyst with Jeffries, told Reuters that the expectation was for Victoza to have an impact somewhere in the mid-teens.
While it may not have hit the mark of analysts’ expectations, Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug is the second such medication to show positive benefits for heart patients, which means there should be a market for its use. The oral treatment Jardiance, co-developed by Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim was shown to be highly effective at reducing the risk of cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke by 14 percent when added to standard of care, in patients with type 2 diabetes. In trials the drug Jardiance showed a 38 percent reduction in cardiovascular deaths.
In Novo Nordisk’s study, Victoza, a GLP-1 receptor, showed a 22 percent reduction in cardiovascular death versus placebo. John Buse, chairman of the endocrinology department at the University of North Carolina and the chairman of the study’s steering committee, called the results “exciting.”
“…it demonstrates that Victoza can improve outcomes beyond glucose reduction and weight loss by helping to avoid cardiovascular complications and death in people with type 2 diabetes,” Buse said in a statement. “Type 2 diabetes treatments that can also reduce cardiovascular risk are important since cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide in this patient population."Novo’s Leader trial was designed to investigate long-term effects of Victoza in people with type 2 diabetes at high risk of major cardiovascular events. That means the results of the trial are good news for Novo Nordisk, as it could encourage physicians to look at using Victoza earlier as a treatment option, rather than a third or fourth option, as it is commonly used now. Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, chief science officer for Novo Nordisk, said the trial results means the company can begin a new era of treatments that go beyond glucose control as the drug can now be used as a treatment for possible complications as well.
Victoza was launched in the European Union in 2009. A version was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the brand name Saxenda in December 2014. In April 2015, Novo Nordisk announced Saxenda was available for sale in the United States. Shares of Novo Nordisk are trading at $51.79 as of 11 a.m., down from Monday’s close of $54.71 per share.
