Radically different
Nature Medicine, Published online: 07 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04479-3
As presented at the American Diabetes Association Meeting, in this phase 3 trial, weekly subcutaneous injections of survodutide, a glucagon receptor/GLP-1R dual agonist, lowered liver fat content and body weight compared to placebo in adults with obesity and at-risk metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD).
You’re reading the web edition of STAT’s ADA in 30 Seconds newsletter, from the American Diabetes Association’s annual conference.
Welcome to the third and final edition of STAT’s ADA in 30 Seconds newsletter.
Elaine Chen starts us off with updates on the competitive climate for obesity drugs and I’m relaying insights on eating disorders, new word on a BCG vaccine, and a clarification from ADA on Friday’s police incident.
New data on Boehringer Ingelheim’s obesity candidate suggest the drug may be helpful in cutting liver fat, but it’s not clear how competitive the treatment would be since it appears less efficacious and less tolerable than drugs on the market.
In a Phase 3 obesity trial, patients on the highest dose of the weekly injectable, called survodutide, lost 13% of their weight after 76 weeks, compared with 5% in the placebo group, according to data presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That’s lower than the rate of weight loss seen in pivotal trials of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound.
Patients on survodutide, which targets the GLP-1 and glucagon hormones, did lose up to 63% of their liver fat, compared with 25% in the placebo group. Glucagon-targeting drugs are thought to be particularly helpful in cutting liver fat, since there are glucagon receptors in the liver.
You’re reading the web edition of STAT’s ADA in 30 Seconds newsletter, from the American Diabetes Association’s annual conference. Sign up here
Welcome back! The American Diabetes Association annual conference is in full swing with news about old and new approaches to treating diabetes.
Buckle in for a day 2 recap.
Eli Lilly has already established that its next-generation obesity drug can lead to highly rapid weight loss. Researchers disclosed new data Saturday that provide more details on the safety and tolerability of the closely-watched therapy.
Lilly previously said that in one late-stage study, called TRANSCEND-T2D-1, retatrutide helped people with diabetes lower blood sugar and lose a significant amount of weight, which is notable since those who have diabetes tend to lose less weight on treatment than those who don’t.
New data showed that seven out of the 403 participants who received retatrutide experienced arrhythmias (irregular heart beats), and three treated participants experienced major cardiovascular complications, compared with none in the placebo group. The data were presented at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association and published in the Lancet.
Detailed data from a mid-stage study offered further evidence that the obesity drug Pfizer acquired from the biotech Metsera could be dosed monthly. But it’s not clear how competitive the treatment would be against weekly injectables on the market and in development that may lead to greater weight loss.
In the study, called VESPER-3, patients with obesity took weekly doses of the drug, called berobenatide, for 12 weeks and then transitioned to higher monthly doses out to 28 weeks. By then, patients lost up to 12.1% of their weight, when analyzing just those who stayed on treatment, as Pfizer previously reported.
New data presented at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association on Saturday show that when patients transitioned from weekly to monthly dosing, the rate of weight loss continued at a similar pace; they had not yet hit a plateau by 28 weeks. That’s a promising sign, but the rate of weight loss at 28 weeks was still less than what was seen at a similar time point in the pivotal trial of Eli Lilly’s Zepbound.
Below is a lightly edited, AI-generated transcript of the “First Opinion Podcast” interview with Cory Anderson and Braxton Mitchell. Be sure to sign up for the weekly “First Opinion Podcast” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get alerts about each new episode by signing up for the “First Opinion Podcast” newsletter. And don’t forget to sign up for the First Opinion newsletter, delivered every Sunday.
Torie Bosch: Last fall, there was a flurry of interest in the Amish and health after President Trump repeated a common claim among vaccine critics: that the Amish don’t vaccinate and don’t get autism. It’s much more complicated than that, though — and it’s far from the only interesting and consequential question about the Amish and public health.
By the time the world began responding to the West Africa epidemic in 2014, which killed more than 11,000 people before it ended in 2016, there were 40 to 50 suspected cases.
The current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had approximately 10 times that number by the time the response started. Three weeks in, it has spread from three health zones to 25, with new areas added almost daily. National, provincial, and local health staff are responding intensively, but fewer than half of known contacts are being traced nationwide, laboratories are backlogged, no Ebola treatment center is ready, few health workers have been trained, there’s insufficient protective equipment for health workers and few medications for patients, and burial teams have come under attack.
Nature Medicine, Published online: 05 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04476-6
As presented at the American Diabetes Association Meeting: this randomized phase 2b trial in 230 adults with overweight or obesity shows that aleniglipron, an oral small-molecule GLP1-RA, led to up to 11.3% body-weight loss compared with placebo after 36 weeks of treatment.