Here is STAT’s biotech scorecard, our regular ledger of stock-moving biotech events, for the third quarter:
Novo Nordisk is conducting a large clinical trial to prove that its GLP-1 drug Wegovy, in addition to helping people lose weight, also improves cardiovascular health. The SELECT study enrolled 17,500 participants who had overweight or obesity and had preexisting heart disease. The participants were then randomized to receive weekly injections of Wegovy or a matching placebo. The primary goal is to determine the extent to which Wegovy reduces the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and heart-related deaths. Wegovy is already a blockbuster drug based on weight loss alone, but proving an additional cardiovascular benefit could open the commercial floodgates.
BridgeBio will report in July an analysis of all-cause mortality from a clinical trial of its heart drug acoramidis. The outcome is an important, second attempt at demonstrating benefit for acoramidis in a progressive heart disease called ATTR-CM. In December 2021, the drug performed no better than a placebo on a test of how far study participants could walk over the course of six minutes, failing to achieve its primary goal. But in this second part of the same study, BridgeBio will determine if acoramidis can significantly reduce hospitalizations and death over the course of 30 months.