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By Adria Calatayud
AstraZeneca's experimental obesity pill helped patients lose weight in two midstage clinical trials, clearing the bar to move the drug to late-stage studies.
The U.K. drugmaker said Monday that the medicine, elecoglipron, resulted in 11.8% weight loss after 36 weeks of treatment in a phase 2 study in patients who have obesity or are overweight and at least one additional condition. A second trial showed the drug helped patients reduce their blood sugar levels, the company said.
With Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk firmly in the lead of the race to develop obesity drugs, AstraZeneca is among the pharmaceuticals looking to catch up with a new generation of products. Roche, Pfizer, Amgen and Boehringer Ingelheim are among others vying to enter the fast-growing market.
Sharon Barr, AstraZeneca's executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development, said during a call with reporters that the study results showed a competitive profile for elecoglipron and potential for the medicine to become a blockbuster asset. The company sees the drug as the backbone of potential future combination therapies, she added.
Elecoglipron is one of several obesity-drug candidates in AstraZeneca's portfolio, which the company expanded earlier this year through a collaboration agreement with China's CSPC Pharmaceutical Group valued at up to $18.5 billion.
AstraZeneca said the elecoglipron data give it the confidence to launch an extensive phase 3 program for the drug, due to start in the second half of the year. The company plans to evaluate the medicine as a treatment for people with obesity or those who are overweight--with or without type 2 diabetes--on its own or in combination with AstraZeneca's diabetes drug Farxiga. The drug's potential benefits in heart failure and chronic kidney disease will also be studied.
In the phase 2 trials, some patients experienced adverse events, mainly nausea and other gastrointestinal symptoms, but they rarely led them to abandon the trial, the company said. The drug's safety profile was consistent with that of other medicines in the so-called GLP-1 class, it added.
The study results were published in scientific journal The Lancet and simultaneously presented at the annual conference of the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans.
Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 08, 2026 16:15 ET (20:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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