Analysts warn side effects could sink the treatment's commercial future, despite liver gains
Nearly one in four patients on the highest dose of Zealand Pharma's obesity drug survodutide quit treatment over side effects.
Reuters reported that analysts say the tolerability problem could determine whether it ever competes commercially.
Zealand shares fell as much as 25 percent on Monday and CNBC reported the stock closed 22.7 percent lower at the bottom of the pan-European Stoxx 600, deepening a nearly 50 percent decline year-to-date.
The slide, Reuters reported, followed late-stage data that Zealand's partner Boehringer Ingelheim presented over the weekend at a medical conference.
Boehringer holds the rights to develop and commercialize survodutide.
The discontinuation figures sat well above rivals.
About 25 percent of patients on the top 6-milligram dose stopped because of side effects, with roughly one in five quitting over gastrointestinal problems, Reuters reported, while Novo's Wegovy and Lilly's Zepbound posted dropout rates of 7 percent and 6 percent in their trials.
CNBC reported a 19 percent dropout rate tied to gastrointestinal events versus 2.9 percent on placebo, with more than 40 percent of patients reporting vomiting.
Analysts framed the data as a commercial warning.
Barclays, CNBC reported, called the safety and tolerability profile disappointing despite interesting body-composition and liver signals.
Per Reuters, the bank added that any drug taken long-term for a metabolic or liver condition succeeds only if patients stay on it.
Citi told CNBC that a 19 percent discontinuation rate over adverse events “is not a rounding error,” adding that nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation at these levels sit “well above what we consider commercially viable” against tirzepatide and semaglutide.
Some of the trouble traced back to a rigid dosing schedule, analysts told Reuters, with most patients having less than three months of treatment left by the time lower-dose flexibility arrived.
Boehringer is now running additional studies on dose adjustment and on switching patients from other GLP-1 drugs, the wire service reported.
The problem, Reuters reported, is not unique to survodutide, according to JPMorgan.
The bank said it reflects a structural challenge for newer treatments tested as approved GLP-1 drugs become more accessible.
The liver findings offered a narrower bright spot.
Jefferies called the liver disease data “perhaps the silver lining,” Reuters reported, with up to 84.2 percent of patients showing a liver fat reduction of at least 30 percent after 48 weeks, against 24.3 percent on placebo.
The results feed a broader shift in how the crowded weight loss market is judged.
Zealand has long pushed back on what it calls the “weight loss olympics” and the outsized focus on percentage weight loss, CNBC reported, and CEO Adam Steensberg said in March he was “extremely certain” the industry would move “towards tolerability.”
As he put it to CNBC, “it's not about that weight loss number, it's about how you achieve that weight loss number.”
