Zealand Pharma CEO says Novo’s CagriSema data supports monotherapy approach to cagrilintide

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By Maggie Fick and Louise Rasmussen

LONDON (Reuters) – The CEO of Danish drugmaker Zealand Pharma said on Friday that data posted by Novo Nordisk’s late-stage study of its next-generation obesity drug CagriSema supported Zealand’s own monotherapy approach to cagrilintide.

Zealand Pharma earlier this month started a mid-stage trial with its weight loss drug candidate petrelintide, which mimics the pancreatic hormone amylin.

Novo’s CagriSema combines semaglutide, which is the active ingredient in its blockbuster medicine Wegovy and mimics the gut hormone GLP-1, and a separate molecule called cagrilintide that, like Zealand’s drug, mimics amylin.

“The data supports our monotherapy approach to cagrilintide big time, even though CagriSema may have disappointed the market,” Zealand Pharma CEO Adam Steensberg told Reuters after Novo Nordisk released its CagriSema data, sending Zealand shares plunging as much as 27%.

Jefferies analysts said in a note that Zealand’s drug candidate may deliver greater weight loss than Novo’s CagriSema.

They cited longer half-life, the time it takes for the concentration of a drug in the body to decrease to half of its initial dose, and better bioavailability, meaning a larger extent of the drug becomes available for its intended destination in the body.

Zealand says it expects 15% to 20% weight loss for its drug in the mid-stage trial.

“I’m happy because if you look at the cagrilintide monotherapy arm (in Novo’s trial), it achieved almost 12% weight loss,” Steensberg said.

“We see that the low dose (in Novo’s trial) of cagrilintide delivered 12%. We think we are on the trajectory to be at the higher end of the range with our molecule because we can dose much higher,” he added.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick and Louise Breusch Rasmussen, writing by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Susan Fenton)