London: Zealand Pharma on Thursday it was said Early stage study Shown High Dosage like him Medicine helped reduce weight There was an average increase of 8.6 percent after 16 weekly doses.

The company said this data clears the way for testing the drug. PetrelinideIn mid-stage trials for weight loss, which are expected to begin later this year.

The weight loss achieved with the higher dose of the drug was much greater than the 1.7 percent reduction achieved with a placebo, in one part of the trial involving 48 participants. The drug was tested on 20 people with a lower dose in the second part of the early-stage study.

Petrelinatide belongs to a class of drugs known as long-acting amylin analogs, which mimic a hormone called amylin, which is co-secreted with insulin in response to ingested nutrients.

The Danish company is working with German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim to test another drug, cervodutide, which belongs to the same class of GLP-1 agonists as Eli Lilly’s Monjaro and Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy.

(Reporting by Leroy Leo in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)