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(Adds Zealand shares, details on drug)
By Ludwig Burger
FRANKFURT, May 10 (Reuters) - Zealand Pharma and partner Boehringer Ingelheim said their experimental obesity drug achieved up to 14.9% weight loss after 46 weeks in a mid-stage trial, adding a potential contestant to the fast growing obesity drug market.
In a statement on Wednesday, the partners said that the Phase II dose-finding trial met its primary endpoint of weight loss, the Danish company added.
A spokesperson for unlisted Boehringer said that the partners are in discussion with regulators about a potential follow-up trial in the third and last phase of testing that is typically required for approval.
The enormous demand for weight-loss treatments such as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, or potentially Eli Lilly's Mounjaro, could support as many as 10 competing products with annual sales reaching up to $100 billion within a decade, mostly in the United States, industry executives and analysts said.
Zealand shares were little changed at 0750 GMT after jumping as much as 3.3% after the open.
Its drug, for now going by the name of BI 456906, is a weekly injection under the skin like Mounjaro and Wegovy as well as like Novo's lower-dose diabetes drug Ozempic with the same active ingredient as Wegovy.
Like the other drugs, BI 456906 works by reducing the effect of a gut hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) that is involved in regulating appetite and food intake.
But BI 456906 also blocks another gut hormone called glucagon. Mounjaro also has a dual mechanism of action, but it blocks yet another gut hormone in addition to GLP-1.
According to drug trial database clinicaltrials.gov, participants in the Zealand/Boehringer trial were put into five groups by chance, with four getting different doses of the experimental weekly shot and the fifth getting a placebo. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Editing by Louise Heavens)