Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug retatrutide has shown “meaningful improvements” across common obesity-related conditions in phase 3 trials, the drugmaker has announced.
Lilly said the GIP, GLP-1 and glucagon triple hormone receptor agonist improved “knee osteoarthritis pain, moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea and type 2 diabetes”, along with “substantial” weight loss.
The results of the two phase 3 trials, Triumph-1 and Transcend-T2D-1, were shared at the American Diabetes Association 86th Scientific Sessions on June 6, with the Transcend-T2D-1 results also being published in The Lancet.
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In the Triumph trial, retatrutide was shown to reduce knee osteoarthritis pain by 73.1% and reduce obstructive sleep apnea severity by 60.6%, as well as meeting the trial’s primary endpoints at 80 weeks.
In the Transcend trial, retatrutide “met the primary and all key secondary endpoints at 40 weeks” for adults with type 2 diabetes.
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The drug also delivered a “significant” reduction in blood sugar (A1C) levels in the Transcend trial, Lilly said.
Up to 90% of participants “achieved an A1C below 7.0%”, which is “the American Diabetes Association’s general target for type 2 diabetes”.
Almost 85% “achieved 6.5% or below”, it added, and 46% achieved “below 5.7%”, the threshold for normal blood sugar levels.
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In both phase 3 trials, retatrutide showed “significant improvements from baseline across certain cardiovascular risk factors”.
The Triumph trial showed “reductions of up to 41.0% in triglycerides, 24.2% in non-HDL cholesterol, 12.3 mmHg in systolic blood pressure” and 9.5 inches in waist circumference at 80 weeks.
In the Transcend trial, participants saw “reductions of up to 39.6% in triglycerides, 19.8% in non-HDL cholesterol, 6.4 mmHg in systolic blood pressure” and 4.9 inches in waist circumference at 40 weeks.
“Potential”
Yale School of Medicine professor, Obesity Research Center director and lead investigator Dr Ania Jastreboff said obesity “drives more than 200 downstream diseases, yet we have historically treated those conditions one at a time and in silos”.
“These findings demonstrate what may be possible when we treat obesity and impact overall health, and what this could mean for people living with obesity and its related complications,” she added.
Eli Lilly executive vice president and president of cardiometabolic health Dr Kenneth Custer said retatrutide delivered a “breadth and magnitude of outcomes” that is “striking to see with a single therapy”.
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“By addressing weight, glycaemia and obesity-related complications together, these results highlight retatrutide’s potential across the cardiometabolic spectrum,” he added.
It comes after Eli Lilly last month announced results from a phase 3 trial of retatrutide that showed the drug could deliver “clinically meaningful weight loss”.
Some 45.3% of patients ended the trial with 30% or greater levels of weight loss, which Lilly said is “a level long associated with bariatric surgery”.
