Zealand Pharma wants a big partner for its weight loss drug

The firm wants to team up with a big pharma company to help develop and commercialize it weight loss drug petrelintide

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Close up of a weight loss drug injection pen.
Close up of a weight loss drug injection pen.
Image: NurPhoto / Contributor (Getty Images)
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The Danish drug maker Zealand Pharma said its looking for a potential partnership with a big pharma company to help it develop, manufacture, and sell its experimental weight loss drug petrelintide.

“The reason that we need a big pharma partner along us at one point is to secure global reach but it’s also because of investments into manufacturing,” Zealand CEO Adam Steensberg told Reuters on Thursday.

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In June, Zealand reported that petrelintide demonstrated similar weight loss to Ozempic and other GLP-1s drugs with fewer side effects in a small phase 1 trial.

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Zealand’s petrelintide works different from GLP-1s drugs since it doesn’t mimic the hormone glucagon-like peptide-1. Instead, it is a long-acting amylin analog, which works by mimicking a hormone that is co-secreted with insulin in the pancreas that increases satiety. Zealand said patients taking a high dose of petrelintide over 16 weeks lost an average 8.6% of their weight. A clinical trial of Novo Nordisk’s NVO-0.24% Wegovy found that it helped users lose about 15% of their body weight over 68 weeks.

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Zealand is pitching petrelinde as an alternative for patients who can’t tolerate GLP-1 treatments, which can include side effects like nauseau, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.

According to Zealand, there were no serious or severe adverse events during the study and only one out 48 participants dropped out of the trial due to side effects. The company is set to start a larger phase 2 clinical trial of the drug in the second half of 2024.

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In addition to petrelintide, Zealand is also developing two other weight loss drugs. The company expects to report results of a phase 1 trail of its GLP-1 medication dapiglutide later this year and begin a phase 2 trial in 2025.

And Zealand has already partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim in developing survotide, a weight loss drug that is also being tested to treat liver disease.

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Zealand is one of several pharma companies that are racing to break up the current weight loss drug duopoly held by Novo Nordisk NVO-0.24%, the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, and Eli Lilly LLY+1.33%, the maker of Zepbound.

Another company, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals ARWR+0.07% announced this week that it is advancing the development of two experimental mRNA-based therapies for obesity.