Novo Nordisk Needs a Better Obesity Pipeline. Its Newest Data Looks Ho-Hum.

Novo had touted an experimental drug called CagriSema as a potential follow-up to Wegovy. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

Key Points

About This Summary

• Novo Nordisk is trying to bolster its obesity drug pipeline as Wegovy enthusiasm cools.
• Cagrilintide, a drug being tested, resulted in 11.8% weight loss versus 2.3% with placebo over a year and a half.
• Novo plans new trials for cagrilintide, touting fewer nausea-related discontinuations than Wegovy.

The weight loss drugmaker Novo Nordisk is trying to shore up its obesity pipeline with a potential alternative to its blockbuster Wegovy, but early data the company presented on Tuesday don’t look too exciting.

Novo shares have dropped more than 55% over the past 12 months as investors have lost faith in the stock, which soared in 2023 and 2024 amid enormous enthusiasm for the company’s weight loss medicines.

One major issue for Novo has been a weight loss pipeline that looks anemic relative to that of Eli Lilly , its major competitor.

Novo had touted an experimental drug called CagriSema as a potential follow-up to Wegovy, saying it expected patients to lose “at least 25%” of their body weight on the medicine. When the company reported in December of 2024 that a Phase 3 study called REDEFINE 1 found that patients on CagriSema had lost just 22.7% of their body weight on average after a year-and-a-half, the stock crashed.

Now, Novo is presenting new data from that same trial, which it says could offer some hope for a potential new weight loss treatment.

CagriSema, the main drug studied in REDEFINE 1, is a combination of Wegovy and a separate medicine called cagrilintide, which works differently from Wegovy. As part of the REDEFINE 1 trial, some patients were given cagrilintide alone. In its Tuesday press release, which coincided with a presentation at a medical conference, Novo rolled out weight loss results from that group of patients.

Novo said that patients in the group that only received cagrilintide lost 11.8% of their body weight over just under a year-and-a-half, compared to 2.3% in patients who only received a placebo.

That doesn’t appear to be a stellar result.

In a Phase 3 trial conducted years ago, patients on Novo’s Wegovy lost 14.9% of their body weight over the same period of time. While direct comparisons between trials are difficult, the apparent inferiority to Wegovy isn’t a great start. Lilly’s Zepbound is already more effective than Wegovy, and drugs in Lilly’s pipeline—notably retatrutide, which is currently in Phase 3 trials—are expected to be even better, and could launch in the coming years.

Still, Novo said Tuesday that it plans to run new trials of cagrilintide alone. The company said that it would start a new set of trials of cagrilintide, called RENEW, before the end of this year.

One bright spot in Tuesday’s data appeared to be the drug’s side effect profile. The company said that only 1% of patients had stopped taking cagrilintide due to nausea. In trials of Wegovy, 6.8% of patients discontinued treatment due to adverse reactions, mostly nausea and vomiting.

Novo appears to be framing cagrilintide as a potential alternative therapy for certain patients. “With the global scale of obesity, further scientific innovation and therapy options are needed to meet every individual’s needs and preferences,” Novo’s chief scientific officer, Martin Holst Lange, said in a statement.

That may not be enough to reinvigorate investor enthusiasm for Novo. It’s hard to imagine cagrilintide as another Wegovy-level blockbuster, and the company’s pipeline still looks thin compared to Lilly.

Novo’s American depositary receipt was up 2.6% on Tuesday. The stock is still down more than 30% this year.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com