Billion-euro takeover: Roche joins the fight against obesity

05-Dec-2023

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(dpa-AFX) The pharmaceutical company Roche is entering the fight against obesity with a US takeover. The Basel-based company will pay 2.7 billion US dollars for the US company Carmot Therapeutics, as the company announced in Basel on Monday. Milestone payments of up to 400 million dollars may also be paid. According to Monday's announcement, Carmot is privately owned and has candidates in its pipeline that can be used to treat obesity in patients with and without diabetes.

The takeover will give Roche access to a differentiated portfolio of incretins, i.e. small protein building blocks (peptides) that influence the feeling of hunger, for example. Specifically, the candidate CT-388 is a Phase II-capable dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist for the treatment of obesity in patients with and without type 2 diabetes. It is reportedly injected subcutaneously once weekly and has the potential to improve weight loss as a single and combination therapy
and to be expanded to other indications.

The candidate CT-996 is in turn taken orally once a day. It is also one of the novel GLP-1 receptor agonists that have recently made headlines at companies such as Novo Nordisk and Ely Lilly. It is also intended for the treatment of obesity in patients with and without type 2 diabetes and is currently in Phase I research.

The third candidate (CT-868) is to be administered subcutaneously once a day. This is also a
GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist that is being tested in a phase II trial for the treatment of type 1 diabetes patients who are overweight or obese.

According to Roche, incretins are intestinal hormones that are released after food intake and play a role in regulating blood glucose levels by stimulating insulin secretion and suppressing appetite.

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/1182196/billion-euro-takeover-roche-joins-the-fight-against-obesity.html