Altimmune’s fate turns around after longer look at obesity trial

Al­tim­mune said a high dose of its weight loss in­jectable pemvidu­tide led to mean weight loss of 15.6% at week 48 in a Phase II tri­al, po­ten­tial­ly giv­ing the biotech new life in drug de­vel­op­ment’s hottest and most lu­cra­tive R&D field.

The da­ta mark a turn­around for the Mary­land biotech, whose shares sank 50% ear­li­er this year when the 24-week da­ta weren’t stel­lar enough to shoot past the ef­fects of mar­ket­ed drugs from No­vo Nordisk and Eli Lil­ly, name­ly We­govy and Zep­bound, re­spec­tive­ly. At that time, the biggest weight loss trig­gered by Al­tim­mune’s drug was about 10.7%, and the safe­ty pro­file seemed to al­so spook in­vestors af­ter near­ly a quar­ter of pa­tients on the drug dropped out.

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