As the oral GLP-1 race intensifies, Eli Lilly has slimmed back the number of phase 2 trials it is conducting for one of its contenders.
The Big Pharma had been running three midstage studies of the GLP-1 drug, called naperiglipron, but the company terminated two of these studies, according to the entries on the federal trial database.
One of these trials was enrolling patients who are overweight or with obesity with Type 2 diabetes, while the other was aimed at adults with a “healthy body mass index.” The termination was first reported by Endpoints.
According to the database entries, both studies only kicked off over the summer and were originally due to run for about a year.
Lilly declined to provide any additional explanation for the recent decision to ax the two trials beyond the “strategic business reasons” noted on the trials’ entries.
The company pointed out to Fierce Biotech in a statement that another phase 2 trial of naperiglipron is still continuing. This study, which Lilly highlighted in its recent second-quarter earnings presentation, is aiming to enroll 275 patients with obesity or who are overweight and has a completion date of September 2026.
“The results will inform the next steps for this program,” a Lilly spokesperson said.
The switch in the clinical strategy for naperiglipron comes as Lilly begins to read out late-stage data for its lead oral GLP-1 drug orforglipron. Last month, orforglipron was tied to an average weight reduction of 12.4%—or 27.3 pounds—at the highest dose.
Although that trial hit its clinical goal, Lilly’s share price dropped 13% on the day of the data release, signaling the lofty expectations investors have for the GLP-1 obesity market. The 12.4% weight loss reported by Lilly is less than the 15.7% weight loss for Novo Nordisk's CagriSema, but Lilly’s chief scientific officer Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., defended orforglipron’s data at the time as being “as good as it gets for GLP-1 monotherapy here in the once-a-day small molecule [space].”
Investors were more receptive to a separate phase 3 readout in patients with Type 2 diabetes last week, which showed that orforglipron helped patients reduce weight by an average of 10.5% as well as a reduction in average blood sugar levels and cardiometabolic risk factors by the trial’s 72-week mark.