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It's a race to the riches in the anti-obesity drug market. This therapeutic area is projected to grow exponentially in the coming years. Novo Nordisk is one of the clear market leaders -- for now -- thanks to its now-famous therapy, Wegovy. However, several companies have promising pipeline candidates they hope will eventually challenge Wegovy.
One of them is Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN), one of the largest biotechs in the world. Amgen recently announced some news regarding its weight-loss pipeline, including the leading candidate therein. Let's find out what investors should make of these developments.
The glass is half full for Amgen
Amgen has talked about two notable weight-loss candidates in recent quarters. One of them is MariTide, which is currently in a phase 2 study. The other, AMG786, was undergoing a phase 1 clinical trial. During its first-quarter earnings conference call, Amgen said it would no longer pursue the development of AMG786. That's a bit of a setback for the drugmaker, but it is still going after the more promising of the two, MariTide.
Though Amgen hasn't yet shared many details about its ongoing mid-stage study for MariTide, it is clear that management sees it as an incredibly promising candidate. CEO Robert Bradway said the data the company has seen so far is very encouraging. Amgen is already drawing the outlines of a phase 3 study, though it plans to release data to the public from the ongoing trial later this year.
Thankfully, we do have some publicly available results from a phase 1 clinical trial for MariTide published in Nature. The broad lines are: MariTide proved effective at reducing weight and, importantly, at keeping the weight of studied patients down for up to 150 days after the treatment ended. That's one of the Achilles' heels of popular weight-loss medicines like Wegovy.
Though they effectively reduce body weight, some research has shown that many patients cannot maintain most of the weight loss after they stop taking the medicines. Here's another advantage MariTide may have over Wegovy. The latter is administered as an injection once a week. MariTide is a monthly injection, which, for most patients, will be preferable.
Amgen also has several pre-clinical anti-obesity programs it is working on right now.
Is the stock a buy?
The weight-loss market is an ideal target for Amgen, whose sales growth has been somewhat inconsistent in the past couple of years despite brand-new approvals. In the first quarter, the company's revenue increased by 22% year over year to $7.4 billion, although much of that increase was due to an acquisition. That aside, Amgen's top line was 6% higher than the year-ago period, a decent performance for a biotech giant.