Novo sets sights on obesity market with diabetes drug

Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Novo aims to catch this wave of new mechanism drugs. As a statement of intent, shortly after the EMDAC hearing, it named Kevin Grove,

formerly of the Oregon Health & Science University, in Portland, as the head of its new obesity research center in Seattle. Bruce Spiegelman, of Harvard Medical School, in Boston, and

several other influential obesity researchers have, with backing from Boston-based Third Rock Ventures, founded Watertown, Massachusetts–based Ember Therapeutics, to develop new therapies

based on insights into the biology of brown fat tissue, which burns rather than stores fat. This effort is still at the preclinical stage, however. The upside for Novo is that liraglutide is

quite a well-known quantity. The drug—a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist—was approved at three lower doses, (0.6, 1.2 and 1.8 mg daily), for treating type 2 diabetes in Europe in

2009 and in the US in 2010. Sold under the Victoza brand, it attained just over $1 billion in sales during the first half of 2014. Rune Majlund Dahl, analyst at DNB Markets, of Oslo, says

Novo Nordisk has been cautious in its sales forecasts of the drug in obesity, with the consensus estimated at DKK3,924 billion ($668 million) in 2019. DNB is more bullish about its

prospects, given the scale of the opportunity. About 35% of the US adult population is now clinically obese, according to a recent report from the Paris-based think tank the Organisation for

Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “We estimate DKK 6,799 million, 73% above consensus,” he wrote in a recent research report. This is a preview of subscription content, access

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Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Dublin Cormac Sheridan Authors * Cormac Sheridan

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sets sights on obesity market with diabetes drug. _Nat Biotechnol_ 32, 1071–1072 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1114-1071 Download citation * Published: 07 November 2014 * Issue Date:

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