New obesity pill is safe and tolerable in early stage trial: AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca said on Monday its experimental weight-loss pill, licensed from China's Eccogene, was safe and tolerable in an early-stage trial.

The Phase I trial, which had 72 participants, was designed to assess the safety and tolerability of the pill, as is common in the earliest stage of clinical trials. People enrolled in the trial were either healthy, non-obese volunteers or people with type 2 diabetes.

AstraZeneca shares briefly rose as much as 2.9 per cent to a session high after the data release, before paring some gains. At 15.30 GMT they were up 0.7 per cent.

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The results from the trial gave AstraZeneca confidence to progress the drug into Phase II clinical trials, Sharon Barr, the company's executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals R&D, told a media briefing.

One of those trials of the drug, called AZD5004, will focus on reduction in body weight on average in obese and overweight participants and is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, Barr said.

When AstraZeneca announced it had licensed the experimental, once-daily obesity pill from Eccogene a year ago for up to $2 billion, it said it believed the treatment could cause fewer side effects than current injectable treatments such Eli Lilly's Zepbound and Novo Nordisk's Wegovy.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot acknowledged when the company announced the Eccogene deal in November 2023 that his company was "a few years behind" the roaring success of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly who were first to market with highly effective obesity drugs.

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