The ensuing frenzy among financial traders demonstrates how weight-loss fever is raging on Wall Street, with investors betting big on companies even when the ultimate viability of their products is far from assured. The commercial success of drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro have revealed a demand so hot that some analysts project it could become the biggest drug category in the entire industry, where even a small slice of the pie could translate to enormous profits.
Structure, based in San Francisco, is developing a pill that could prove to be a popular alternative to today’s most popular drugs for losing weight, which all are injected once a week. The company’s shares soared by as much as 66 percent in early trading Friday, and finished the day up 35 percent, giving it a stock-market value of $1.8 billion.
Umer Raffat, an analyst at Evercore ISI, said Structure’s data would be competitive with weight-loss pills being developed by Eli Lilly and Pfizer. Liver safety had been a concern for investors, he noted, and the company’s release said there were “no clinically meaningful changes in liver function tests.”
Eli Lilly, which makes Mounjaro, and Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, have dominated the market for the new class of medicine often called GLP-1 drugs, named for the gut hormone they mimic. The drugs, which help control blood sugar for diabetic patients, also suppress appetite by slowing the stomach from emptying and sending a signal of fullness to the brain. A host of companies are working on competitors, with 54 anti-obesity drugs in clinical trials or showing positive results in late-stage studies, according to Goldman Sachs analysts.
Structure has no products that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it doesn’t generate any revenue. Still, investor enthusiasm about the weight-loss pill it is developing has roughly doubled its shares since it began trading in February.
The company said Friday it had agreed to sell shares to certain institutional investors that would raise $300 million, cash it will use to help develop its leading drug candidate and fund additional studies.
Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
