Dive Brief:
- AstraZeneca and Regeneron are partnering on weight loss, announcing Tuesday a deal to develop and commercialize medicines emerging from the big biotech's discovery of a mutation associated with lower risk of obesity. The two companies didn't disclose specific financial terms, but will equally share research and development costs and profits.
- Regeneron discovered the mutation after screening nearly 650,000 people and found that those with at least one inactive copy of a gene called GPR75 weighed, on average, nearly 12 pounds less than those who didn't. The GPR75 gene encodes for a protein commonly expressed in the brain.
- Drugmakers have struggled to develop an effective treatment for obesity, prompting many people to seek more invasive procedures like bariatric surgery. Novo Nordisk's injectable drug Saxenda is the best-selling obesity drug, with about $900 million in 2020 revenue. On average, it helps obese people lose between 5-7% of their body weight.
Dive Insight:
Rising obesity rates, and associated complications like diabetes and heart disease, have sparked a hunt for drugs that can help people lose more weight than they typically can with lifestyle changes alone. A decade ago, a three-way race emerged between the weight-loss pills Contrave, Qsymia and Belviq, but each of them showed modest benefits and had side effects — Belviq was withdrawn because of an elevated risk of cancer.
On the injectable side, Saxenda is a high-dose version of Novo's diabetes drug Victoza. Ozempic, a follow-on to Victoza, likewise has an approved formulation for obesity called Wegovy. And Novo's rival Eli Lilly is looking for similar success with its experimental diabetes drug tirzepatide, which is now in clinical trials for obesity.
AstraZeneca and Regeneron are going with a different approach. They aim to develop a "small molecule" alternative to Novo's and Lilly's peptide drugs, meaning the product could be administered as a pill rather than an injection, which could make it more attractive to patients.
Regeneron's genetics center identified five genes, including GPR75, that encode proteins expressed in portions of the brain that regulate hunger and metabolism. A mutation to GPR75, expressed in about 4 in every 10,000 people sequenced, was associated with a 54% reduction in the risk of obesity.
Regeneron tested the hypothesis by genetically altering GPR75 in mice, and found that it led to reduced weight gain when the mice were fed a high-fat diet.
The partnership will break new ground in two ways for Regeneron. A successful small molecule drug would be a first, since its marketed products are all biologics. Regeneron also doesn't have a presence in metabolic disease — just two cholesterol-lowering agents, Praluent and Evkeeza, the former of which is partnered with Sanofi.
Collaborating with AstraZeneca could be seen as a sensible move, since the U.K. pharma giant has small-molecule expertise as well as an established presence in metabolic disease because of its diabetes drugs Farxiga and Onglyza.