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Pfizer is due to conduct mid-stage clinical trials of a daily weight-loss drug later this year, as the struggling pharmaceutical group pins its hopes on the experimental drug as a way to enter a market predicted to be worth more than $130 billion a year.
The New York-based drugmaker said Thursday it will begin a study later this year to evaluate optimal dosages for the weight-loss drug, which is based on a compound called danugliplon, a glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) similar to those used in popular weight-loss drugs made by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.
The announcement comes as Pfizer struggles to convince investors it can find a path to growth after the pandemic, amid plummeting sales of its blockbuster vaccine and other coronavirus-related products.
Late last year, the drug company halted trials of a twice-daily version of danugliplon after it caused nausea, vomiting and gastrointestinal side effects, although it had been successful in helping obese patients lose weight.
Pfizer’s outgoing chief scientific officer, Mikael Dolsten, said Thursday that danugliplon “has demonstrated superior efficacy in a twice-daily formulation and we believe a once-daily formulation has the potential to be competitive in the oral GLP-1 space.”
Even if Pfizer’s weight-loss drug is successful, it will have a hard time catching up with rivals: Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which have already made billions in sales from their blockbuster weight-loss injectables Wegobee and Zepbound, respectively, are currently testing weight-loss drugs in Phase 3 clinical trials.
Meanwhile, biotech companies Zealand Pharma, Structure Therapeutics and Viking Therapeutics are also testing weight-loss drugs in mid-stage clinical trials, and other drugmakers such as AstraZeneca and Amgen are also scrambling to find entrants into the lucrative market.
Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs analysts raised their estimate for the peak size of the global weight-loss drug market to $130 billion from $100 billion per year, predicting that 19 million U.S. adults will be prescribed weight-loss drugs.
Pfizer’s first-quarter revenue fell 20% from a year ago to $14.8 billion due to sharp declines in sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment Paxlovid.
At a Goldman Sachs investor conference last month, Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said the company was “very keen” to enter the weight-loss market, but added that GLP-1 is “just scratching the surface of what we’re seeing in obesity treatment.”
He said the weight-loss injectable faces the “most immediate competition” and that Pfizer has a chance to launch an oral version two years after Eli Lilly.
Pfizer is also conducting preclinical studies of several other weight-loss drugs, including formulations that are not based on GLP-1. Early-stage trials of danugliplon were conducted in 20 obese patients, according to a U.S. government clinical trials database.
Pfizer shares, which have fallen by more than half from their pandemic-era peak, rose 1.3% shortly after the open on Wall Street on Thursday.
