The new drug amycretin made users lose weight by 22 percent in less than a year – the Danish company Novo Nordisk’s share jumped

Danish Shares of pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk jumped 12 percent on Friday after the release of research results on a new weight loss drug. In patient trials, users of the new drug amycretin, which is still in the trial phase, lost an average of 22 percent in just 9 months.

The comparison group, which received a placebo, only lost two percent of weight. In the trial, patients were injected with amycretin once a week. An oral form of it is also under development.

Amycretin affects – like Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide-containing diabetes and slimming drug Wegovy – the intestinal hormone GLP 1, which regulates insulin production. In addition, amycretin also affects amylin produced by the pancreas, which is believed to affect the feeling of satiety.

Wegovy is a slimming version of the diabetes drug Ozempic.

125 subjects participated in the trial of the injectable amycretin preparation.

Novo Nordisk has already tried the drug in pill form on a small group of patients. The subjects lost 13 percent weight in three months.

Novo Nordiskin the stock has been on a wild roller coaster for the past year. The share price already rose by more than a thousand Danish kroner last summer. On Friday, it cost about 650 kroner, or about 35 percent less.

In the summer, the company became the most valuable listed company in all of Europe. However, the competition in the market of slimming drugs is getting tougher. For example, Eli Lilly has already developed a more effective weight loss product than Wegovy.

Investors are waiting to see if Novo Nordisk can develop an equally effective competitor. Amycretin’s patient trials will take years anyway, according to Reuters, before the drug can enter the market.

In December, the company’s stock collapsed when the patient trial results of another new slimming drug were considered disappointing in the market. The weight loss drug Cagrisema was expected to drop 25 percent of a dieter’s weight. However, studies showed that it only achieved an average of 22.7 percent weight loss over 68 weeks.

Cagrisema is expected to go on sale as early as 2026. It is a so-called second-generation slimming drug. The share price is loaded with such high expectations for the future that even small disappointments cause large price movements.