Combining an investigational GLP-1 obesity drug with another type of experimental drug yielded dramatic improvements in fatty liver disease in a mid-stage study, with signs of improvement evident as early as 12 weeks after starting treatment, researchers say.
The once-weekly combo drug from D&D Pharmatech combines the company’s experimental GLP-1 drug zabopegdutide with its experimental drug TLY012, which is designed to induce the death of damaged cells.
Participants in the trial were overweight or obese, with biopsy-proven fatty liver disease.
After 48 weeks of treatment, biopsies showed that patients randomly assigned to receive the new combo drug had significantly more reductions in liver fat and improvements in liver damage compared to patients who received a placebo, researchers had previously announced.
This week in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the researchers reported that the meaningful microscopic improvements in liver tissue they saw at 48 weeks on the biopsy samples were associated with clinically meaningful improvements in certain blood tests that were already evident after only 12 weeks.
“Many of these benefits occurred before meaningful weight loss, suggesting that zabopegdutide provides direct therapeutic effects on the liver beyond weight reduction,” D&D President and CEO Seulki Lee said in a statement.
Even among patients who had lost less than 5% of their body weight by week 12, zabopegdutide still produced significant reductions in liver fat and liver stiffness, the researchers reported.
