On Tuesday, there were two key news items from Novo Nordisk (NVO 1.75%) for investors to digest. The pharmaceutical company, best known for its highly popular Wegovy obesity medication, unveiled results of a late-stage clinical trial of a potential successor drug. On top of that, it presented research suggesting previously unknown beneficial effects of taking Wegovy.
The market liked what it heard, clearly, and investors collectively bid up Novo Nordisk stock by almost 3% on the day. That gave it an easy beat against the S&P 500 index, which slumped marginally.
The next Wegovy?
At this year's annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, Novo Nordisk presented data from a phase 3 clinical trial for cagrilintide. Like Wegovy, this treatment targets obesity, and it performed well versus a placebo in the study.
Patients administered the once-weekly injectable medication shed an average of 11.8% of their weight over the 68-week course of the study. That compared very favorably to results from participants taking a placebo, who collectively lost 2.3%.
Cagrilintide was generally well tolerated, with only mild to moderate side effects. These were most commonly gastrointestinal in nature.
Good feelings
In another presentation, Novo Nordisk detailed the findings from a real-world study indicating that the healthcare company's semaglutide (Wegovy's active ingredient) helped reduce "food noise." In other words, they experienced significantly fewer intrusive thoughts and feelings about eating. All told, 46% of the participants in the study reported such improvement.
A greater proportion (64%) said their metal well-being was improved while taking the drug, and 80% said they took up healthier behaviors on Wegovy.
