SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China’s Innovent Biologics said on Monday its GLP-1 injection led to more weight loss and better control of blood sugar in patients with diabetes than injectable semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s diabetes and weight-loss medicines.
The late-stage head-to-head trial compared different doses of the two drugs in patients with diabetes and obesity to assess glycemic control and weight loss. One group received a 6 mg dose of the mazdutide drug that Innovent develops and the other a 1 mg dose of injectable semaglutide.
Innovent, which secured exclusive development and commercialisation rights in China for mazdutide from Eli Lilly under undisclosed financial terms in 2019, is also approved in China to sell that drug as a treatment for type 2 diabetes.
It is one of a number of Chinese weight loss and diabetes drugmakers ramping up competition with Novo and Lilly in the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market.
Novo sells injectable semaglutide for patients with type 2 diabetes in China under the brand name Ozempic to control blood sugar.
In the trial, which enrolled 349 adults with type 2 diabetes and obesity, mazdutide showed greater improvements in both HbA1C – a measure of blood sugar over time – and weight reduction.
Patients who took Innovent’s drug at the 6 mg dose lost a mean of 10.29% of their weight from baseline compared to 6% with the 1 mg dose of injectable semaglutide. Innovent’s drug also lowered patients’ HbA1C by a mean of 2.03, compared to 1.84 for the 1 mg dose of injectable semaglutide.
“The head-to-head DREAMS-3 study comparing mazdutide with semaglutide further showed that in patients with T2D and comorbid obesity mazdutide provides superior efficacy in both weight loss and glucose lowering,” Innovent’s chief R&D officer of general biomedicine, Lei Qian, said in a statement.
A Novo Nordisk spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside of normal business hours.
(Reporting by Andrew Silver in Shanghai; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
