Diabetes Drug To Be Tested As Diet Drug

Filed in archive News on September 19, 2006

A diabetes drug may be the new weight-loss pill.

Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk has decided to conduct a separate clinical trial of its promising type 2 diabetes treatment, Liraglutide, for use as a diet drug by obese people who are not diabetics.

Liraglutide, a long-acting derivative of the natural hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), in phase II trials improved the ability of pancreatic beta cells to secrete insulin in people with type 2 diabetes.

Chief Science Officer Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen said Novo Nordisk has recruited 60 percent of patients it needs for a phase III trial of Liraglutide as a diabetes medication, and expects to file for regulatory approval of Liraglutide as an injectible diabetes drug in the U.S. and Europe in 2008.

But even as it is conducting the phase III trial, Novo Nordisk said it plans to start a phase II trial of Liraglutide as a treatment for obesity in the first quarter of 2007.

The reason: in a three-month study of Liraglutide as a treatment for diabetes, the two higher doses of the drug tested resulted in a mean weight loss of 5 to 6 pounds.

It is unusual to see a new medicine being developed for two purposes at once.