The Zhitong Finance app learned that an American biotech company dedicated to developing drugs to treat obesity and liver disease$Altimmune (ALT.US)$An extremely optimistic mid-term study of its major experimental weight loss drug, pemvidutide (pemvidutide), was announced.

The company said on Thursday local time that in a 48-week trial, the highest dose of the drug helped obese patients lose up to 16% of their weight, or 32.2 pounds. As of press time, the stock has surged more than 40%.

According to information, Altimmune's positive trial results put it on a par with Wegovy (active ingredient is semeglutide) under Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk A/S (Novo Nordisk A/S). The “magic drug for weight loss” Wegovy helped obese patients lose about 15% of their weight during the 68-week trial.

Currently, the weight loss drug that poses the greatest threat to Wegovy is undoubtedly Tirzepatide (Tirzepatide), owned by US pharmaceutical giant Lilly. Unlike liraglutide and simetaglutide, which use single GLP-1 receptor agonist therapies, tizepatide combines GLP-1R with GIP receptors. Pevitopeptide developed by Altimmune is actually a double agonist, combining GLP-1R and GCGR.

In the test results, this combination of dual agonists showed balanced high efficacy, and the hypoglycemic and weight loss effects were further improved compared to Novo Nord's Wegovy. Test data showed that after 40 weeks of treatment with tizepatide, the level of glycated hemoglobin (the main indicator for measuring blood sugar) of 29-51% of patients dropped as much as 5.7%, while the proportion of subjects whose simeglutide reached this index was only 20%.

In terms of weight loss efficacy, a comparative analysis conducted by medical data and analysis company Truveta Research shows that in a sample of about 18,000 overweight or obese patients, patients who use Tirzepatide are 15% more likely to lose weight than patients who use Wegovy. The average fat loss effect of Tirzepatide over the three-month period was 5.9%, while Wegovy was 3.6%. At the one-year mark point, patients treated with Tirzepatide lost an average weight of 15.2%, compared to 7.9% in the Wegovy group.

Altimmune staged a rise to prominence

Pharmaceutical companies around the world are racing to replicate the success brought about by Novo Nordisk and the company's current strongest competitor, Lilly. These drugs are being used to achieve rapid weight loss and generate epic sales. Some of these drug makers are moving their products into clinical trials, while others are considering acquiring smaller companies, which have already achieved promising positive results.

Pevitopeptide developed by Altimmune is actually a double agonist, but it combines GLP-1R and GCGR, while Lilly's tezepatide binds GLP-1R to GIP receptors. The 48-week experimental data released by Altimmune on Thursday local time on Thursday local time is encouraging. Weight loss levels in all dosage groups have seen a marked increase. They are at almost the same level as the results of Novo Nordisk's Wegovy test, and have shown a dose correlation.

By Thursday's closing, the market capitalization of the company, headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was close to 170 million US dollars, which is very small compared to Novo Nordisk's market capitalization of 450 billion US dollars and the US pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly's market capitalization of 560 billion US dollars.

Altimmune said that patients undergoing the Altimmune trial continued to lose weight after treatment was completed, while their blood pressure dropped and their heart rate did not increase significantly. This was different from what was observed in some other diet drug trials. At doses up to 2.4 mg, almost one-third of trial participants lost 20% or more of their body weight, and the weight loss trajectory at the end of 2.4 mg dose treatment showed that continued treatment could achieve greater weight loss.

Altimmune said the most common side effects were nausea and vomiting, with only one patient having serious complications. Scott Harris, the company's chief medical officer, said in a statement: “In this trial, a 48-week level of weight loss has been shown to completely reverse the major complications caused by obesity.” The company is developing a drug that simultaneously treats obesity and a serious liver disease.

Altimmune management will hold a conference call on Friday morning local time to discuss the trial results.

The future prospects for diet pills are extremely broad! Wall Street funding flooded to Lilly and Novo Nordisk

According to the latest 13F documents disclosed by Wall Street financial institutions, due to the explosive growth in global consumer demand for the “magic medicine for weight loss” of the two major pharmaceutical giants, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, Wall Street financial giants can be called “throwing real money” in the stock market to strongly support these two pharmaceutical giants, and are extremely optimistic about the stock price prospects of these two companies.

According to the latest 13F document, J.P. Morgan, BlackRock (BlackRock), Vanguard, Two Sigma, Tiger Global Management, and Coatue Management significantly increased their stock allocation ratio for Lilly in the third quarter. J.P. Morgan Chase, a financial institution alone, has increased its holdings by more than 1.6 million shares. Currently, the value of equity held in shares is about 1 billion US dollars.

Meanwhile, global asset management giants such as Fidelity Investments (Fidelity Investments), Lazard Asset Management (Lazard Asset Management), T Rowe Price, and Soros Fund (Soros Fund) have all greatly increased their holdings in Novo Nordisk's ADR in the US stock market.

Analysts at Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs expect that by 2030, the annual sales volume of the global anti-obesity drug market may grow to around 100 billion US dollars, while the annual sales volume earlier this year was only 6 billion US dollars. Goldman Sachs's forecast is based on about 15 million American adults receiving anti-obesity medication for chronic weight loss management in 2030, while there are about 105 million obese or overweight adults in the US. Analysts excluded diabetics from obesity predictions. The World Obesity Federation (WOF) predicts that by 2035, more than 4 billion people (more than half of the world's population) may have varying degrees of obesity.

According to forecast data from DataHorizzon Research, the weight loss drug market is expected to be about 1.9 billion US dollars in 2022, and is expected to be close to 90 billion US dollars by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 50%.

So far this year, the stock prices of Novo Nordisk and Lilly have risen by 48% and 61% respectively in the US stock market, significantly outperforming the US stock index, the S&P 500 Index.

Editor/Corrine