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Data on late-stage CagriSema trial expected by end of 2024

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Novo still confident on 25% weight loss potential -Lange

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Data a 'must win' for Novo obesity-driven

investments-analysts

(Adds quotes, details, from paragraph 4)

By Maggie Fick

LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Novo Nordisk said

the side effects in trials so far for its experimental obesity

drug CagriSema were similar to its GLP-1 drugs already on the

market, and reiterated its expectation the new injection will

deliver 25% weight loss.

Martin Holst Lange, Novo Nordisk's head of development, made

the comments to Reuters after the company released

better-than-expected third-quarter results.

The Danish drugmaker is due to release data from a

late-stage trial of CagriSema, a two-drug combination obesity

treatment that, like its popular obesity drug Wegovy, is

injected, by the end of 2024.

CagriSema targets the same gut hormone as Wegovy does, but

also targets a pancreas hormone called amylin.

Novo Nordisk has previously said that CagriSema has a

potential of up to 25% weight loss, compared with the 15% weight

loss of Wegovy.

Lange said on Wednesday the company still expects the

data from its Phase 3 trial to reflect this higher weight loss.

"No change in our confidence level," he said.

Analysts view this data as "a must-win" for Novo's

obesity-driven investment case, given the hot competition among

pharma companies to deliver higher weight loss than Wegovy and

Zepbound, the rival obesity injection that U.S. company Eli

Lilly ( LLY ) launched last year.

Novo's share price could go up to 20% higher or lower

depending on it, predict ABG Sundal Collier analysts.

Lange said that Novo needed to collect more data on the

psychiatric side effects of another experimental obesity

treatment, monlunabant, in a Phase 2b trial before it could

progress to a Phase 3 or late-stage trial.

The company's shares fell nearly 5% in September after

results from a Phase 2a trial of monlunabant, a pill, came in

below market expectations. Novo acquired the drug last year as

part of its $1 billion purchase of Canadian biotech firm

Inversago Pharmaceuticals.

Novo had already planned to conduct a Phase 2b trial even

before it got the data from the latest trial, Lange said, but

the Phase 2a trial did reveal new psychiatric side effects and

suggests that perhaps excessively high dose strengths were

tested. The new trial will involve a lower-dose strength, he

said.

Monlunabant is a cannabinoid or CB1 receptor blocker.

Although it has a similar effect as the GLP-1 drugs already on

the market, it has a different mechanism of action.