Once-Daily GLP-1 Pill Helps People Lose Up to 12.1% Body Weight in 36 Weeks, Trial Shows

A once-daily GLP-1 pill helped people with obesity or overweight lose up to 12.1% of their body weight in 36 weeks in the phase 2b ACCESS trial, published in Nature Medicine. Aleniglipron — a small molecule rather than a peptide — requires no injections, and an open-label extension showed continued weight loss to as much as 16.2% at 56 weeks.

Key Takeaways

A once-daily GLP-1 pill helped people with obesity or overweight lose up to 12.1% of their body weight in 36 weeks in the phase 2b ACCESS trial, published in Nature Medicine.
Aleniglipron — a small molecule rather than a peptide — requires no injections, and an open-label extension showed continued weight loss to as much as 16.2% at 56 weeks.

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An experimental once-daily GLP-1 pill helped people with obesity or overweight shed as much as 12.1% of their body weight in just 36 weeks, according to results from the phase 2b ACCESS trial published in Nature Medicine.

The drug, aleniglipron, belongs to the same class as blockbuster injectables like Wegovy and Ozempic, but with a crucial difference: it is a small molecule rather than a peptide, which means it can be taken as a pill — no injections, refrigeration or special handling required. In the placebo-controlled trial, treatment led to up to 11.3% greater body-weight loss than placebo at 36 weeks, with total weight reductions of 9.0% to 12.1% across the doses studied.

The data add momentum to a race that has defined the obesity market for the past two years: pharmaceutical companies are competing to develop oral GLP-1 drugs that can deliver results comparable to injections at scale, targeting the millions of patients who avoid injectables. An open-label extension of the trial showed continued weight loss beyond 36 weeks — up to 16.2% (about 40.5 pounds) with the 120 mg dose at 56 weeks, according to developer Structure Therapeutics.

Small-molecule oral agonists also open the door to substantially cheaper manufacturing, which could matter enormously for global access in health systems that cannot absorb the cost of current injectable therapies. Analysts have long viewed an effective oral GLP-1 as one of the most valuable pharmaceutical products in development.

The full results were published in Nature Medicine as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2b trial in people with overweight or obesity. As with all GLP-1 receptor agonists, side effects and safety data from longer-term trials will determine how quickly the pill can reach pharmacy shelves — and whether it can finally make the blockbuster class a practical option for the billions of people living with obesity worldwide.