ARCH-backed startup Metsera launches with $290M to take on obesity giants

A new start­up aims to chal­lenge No­vo Nordisk and Eli Lil­ly’s du­op­oly atop to­day’s mar­ket for obe­si­ty drugs.

The start­up Met­sera of­fi­cial­ly launched Thurs­day, an­nounc­ing $290 mil­lion in an ini­tial fi­nanc­ing to ad­vance mul­ti­ple ex­per­i­men­tal weight loss drugs in­to the clin­ic.

Many de­tails on Met­sera’s clin­i­cal strat­e­gy, which will test com­bi­na­tions of var­i­ous drugs, re­main close­ly-guard­ed se­crets. But Met­sera’s lead as­set is a GLP-1 ag­o­nist now in the clin­ic in the US, CEO Clive Mean­well said, with ad­di­tion­al pro­grams not far be­hind. The team is run­ning head-to-head non-clin­i­cal and ear­ly clin­i­cal stud­ies against Ozem­pic and Moun­jaro, and plans to ran­dom­ize its Phase 1/2 pro­grams in that same man­ner.

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