AstraZeneca’s investigational oral GLP-1 therapy showed encouraging results in mid-stage trials for obesity and type 2 diabetes, though it remains unclear how the drug, elecoglipron, will compare with other pills already available or advancing in development.
In the Phase 2 VISTA trial, patients with obesity who received the highest dose of elecoglipron lost an average of 11.2% of their body weight after 36 weeks, using an analysis that included all participants regardless of whether they stopped treatment. AstraZeneca presented the data Monday at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association, and the findings were also published in The Lancet. Eli Lilly’s oral GLP-1 candidate, Foundayo, produced a similar rate of weight loss in a longer Phase 3 study, but direct comparisons across trials in different stages are difficult.
In a separate Phase 2 study, SOLSTICE, patients with diabetes taking the highest dose of elecoglipron saw reductions of up to 1.74 percentage points in A1C, a key measure of blood sugar control, after 26 weeks. The study, also published in The Lancet, included an open-label comparator group taking oral Ozempic, whose A1C fell by 1.32 percentage points.
