Lilly pill cuts weight and blood sugar in second key trial

In a Phase 3 trial of patients with obesity and diabetes, the highest dose of Eli Lilly's experimental pill led to 9.6% weight loss after 72 weeks, compared with 2.5% in the placebo group, when analyzing all participants regardless of discontinuations. Patients on the highest dose also experienced a 1.7 percentage-point decrease in their A1c levels compared with a 0.5 percentage-point reduction in the placebo group.

With these data, Lilly will submit orforglipron to regulators, and it expects an approval next year.

It's not clear, though, if these data will assuage concerns about the competitiveness of the medicine, called orforglipron. Lilly just a few weeks ago reported that in a separate Phase 3 trial of obese people without diabetes, the pill led to less-than-expected weight loss.

neuroscience

AbbVie to buy Gilgamesh's psychedelic drug

AbbVie said yesterday that it will acquire Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals' psychedelic drug to treat major depression.

The pharma company will buy the drug, called bretisilocin, for up to $1.2 billion, while Gilgamesh will spin out a new company for its staff and other drug programs.

The move shows AbbVie's growing interest in psychedlics and neuroscience, after it previously signed a collaboration agreement with Gilgamesh.

sequencing

Illumina CEO still sees a path back to steady growth

Despite the many headwinds Illumina has faced in recent months, its CEO still sees the company on track to meet its previously stated goal of high single-digit revenue growth by 2027, though he expects revenue to dip between 0.5% and 2.5% this year.

Illumina has contended with China banning its DNA sequencers in China, the potential impact of tariffs, and the government's withdrawal of funding to university labs that buy its seequncing equipment.

My colleague Jonathan Wosen spoke with CEO Jacob Thaysen to hear how he will bring the company back to growth. Read the interview here.

pharma

Repatha's decade-long road to becoming a hot product

From my colleague Matt Herper: Amgen said yesterday that the FDA cleared its cholesterol-lowering injection Repatha to be used to prevent heart attacks and strokes in patients who do not yet have cardiovascular disease but are at high risk.

That opens the drug up to a much larger potential market and comes as the company awaits results of a 12,000-patient clinical trial that would aim to prove that in this "primary prevention" population, the drug prevents heart attacks, strokes, and deaths. It only took a decade.

After Repatha was approved in 2015, executives at CVS projected that the drug, as well as a similar PCSK9 inhibitor from Regeneron, would cost U.S. insurers $150 billion. Instead, the drugs were caught up in a backlash over drug costs and access following the budget-breaking launch of Gilead's hepatitis C drugs. In 2019, Repatha had only brought in $661 million in sales.

But Repatha sales have slowly creeped up and are projected to reach $2.2 billion next year. Analysts at T.D. Cowen say the drug could bring in $5.8 billion in peak sales. A big question, though, is how the drug will perform in the ongoing study, due by the end of the year and called Veselius-CV.

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