AbbVie is joining the amylin arena, though the pharma is still far behind leaders Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.
AbbVie on Monday jumped into the hot weight-loss space, looking to gain ground on its Big Pharma peers, with a licensing deal with Danish company Gubra that aims to bring a long-acting amylin drug to the market.
Under the terms of the deal, AbbVie will front $350 million and put up to $1.875 billion on the line for development, commercial and sales milestones. Gubra, a service provider for pre-clinical research and peptide-based drug discovery, will be eligible to receive tiered royalties on global net sales of GUB014295, the asset at the center of Monday’s partnership.
Designed to be administered via an injection under the skin, GUB014295 is a long-acting analog of the amylin hormone, which acts on corresponding receptors to elicit feelings of satiety and suppress appetite, in turn lowering the overall intake of food. Amylin agonists such as GUB014295 also exert an inhibitory effect on the gastrointestinal system, helping to slow the emptying of the stomach, according to AbbVie’s press announcement.
The current obesity landscape is dominated by GLP-1 medicines like Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide brands Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide franchise of Mounjaro and Zepbound. But recently, more and more companies have been looking to amylin agents as an alternative weight-loss treatment.
According to a December 2024 note from Leerink Partners, which called amylin the “hottest new mechanism for obesity,” targeting this pathway could potentially improve the quality of weight loss, with greater reductions in fat instead of lean muscle. Amylin agonists could also be safer and more tolerable than GLP-1 drugs, the analysts said.
At the forefront of the amylin push is Novo, which is advancing CagriSema, a combo regimen of its semaglutide, with the long-acting amylin drug cagrilintide. Late last year, however, the pharma unveiled Phase III data for CagriSema, baring an efficacy estimate that fell below its own prior projections and sending its shares crashing 20%. The readout wiped some $72 billion off Novo’s market cap.
Fellow obesity leader Eli Lilly is also working on its own set of amylin programs, of which the mid-stage eloralintide is closest to the market. The pharma is testing a combination of the amylin drug eloralintide with tirzepatide in participants with obesity but without diabetes, for which data is expected in mid-2025. Eloralintide is also being assessed in patients with obesity and overweight with type 2 diabetes.
Several other biopharma players are advancing their own amylin hopefuls, including Zealand Pharma and AstraZeneca.
