(Reuters) – Structure Therapeutics said on Monday its experimental oral obesity drug helped reduce weight by 6.2% on average in a mid-stage study, exceeding Wall Street expectations and sending shares 20% higher in premarket trading.
Structure’s once-daily oral drug, GSBR-1290, belongs to the same class of treatments as Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound.
Leerink analysts said in a note before the data that they expected weight loss of between 5% to 6% in the trial at the end of 12 weeks, compared with 6% to 7% from Lilly’s trial of its oral weight loss drug orforglipron.
“Overall, results are in line with and perhaps even better than our expectations,” Guggenheim analysts said on Monday.
In a separate study, the drug’s new tablet formulation showed mean weight loss of up to 6.9% at 12 weeks of treatment, Structure said.
(Reporting by Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
