A Swiss pharmaceutical company hoping to cash in on the weight loss drug trend is having its dreams dashed amid new results showing that the drugs cause a broad majority of patients to yak.
As the Financial Times reports, the drugmaker Roche found in trials for the experimental drug, dubbed CT-388, that a majority of people who took the highest dose of it in both injectable and pill form suffered from nausea and vomiting.
Revealed during the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes last week, these new side effect results found that a whopping 75 percent of those who take the highest dose of the injectable version of the as-yet-unbranded drug experienced vomiting. Results for the pill version, which Roche acquired along with injectable CT-388 when it purchased Carmot Therapeutics at the beginning of this year, were similar.
Trying to quell investor concerns that saw its stock fall five percent in the wake of the trial results, a Roche representative suggested that the side effects were comparable to similar drugs.
"The safety and tolerability profile was consistent with other incretin-based therapies at a similar stage of development and typically improves with slower titrations over time," a rep from the Swiss firm told Bloomberg last week, referencing the gut hormones mimicked in early GLP-1 drugs like Byetta and Victoza. "There were no treatment-related study discontinuations and no unexpected efficacy loss."
Though Roche's statement is carefully couched to imply that getting sick is a kink to be weeded out in further trials, it contains some unfortunate grains of truth.
Most GLP-1/GIP drugs on the market right now, including Novo Nordisk's blockbuster semaglutide-based injections Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly's liraglutide-based counterparts Mounjaro and Zepbound, do list nausea and vomiting among their warning label side effects. Other GI problems like diarrhea and even intestinal blockage are also fairly common among GLP-1 drugs.
Where CT-388 differs from more established GLP-1s, though, is the frequency of these adverse effects.
With Wegovy, for instance, 44 percent of trial participants experienced nausea and nearly a quarter reported vomiting. The figures are a bit lower with Mounjaro, hovering at around 22 percent of active tirzepatide participants experiencing nausea and one in 10 reporting vomiting.
While those numbers are still alarming, they're obviously far preferable to the sky-high ones coming out of the Roche trial.
More on weight loss drugs: More Than 900 Patients Say Ozempic and Similar Drugs Unexpectedly Injured Them
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