BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Weighing in on obesity

How Contrave and liraglutide could succeed in obesity

September 22, 2014 7:00 AM UTC

Contrave naltrexone/bupropion will be the first new obesity drug launched in the past two years to have the full weight of a large pharma partner with an established commercial footprint in the cardiometabolic space behind it. The same is true for liraglutide, which is waiting in the wings. This experience could help get skeptical physicians off the sidelines and into the business of treating weight loss with more than just diet and exercise; however, payers will still need evidence that the weight loss translates into real world benefits. Otherwise these new entrants could languish just like the products that came before them.

On Sept. 10, FDA approved Contrave from Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. as an adjunct to diet and exercise to manage weight loss in people with a BMI of at least 30 kg/m2 or in people with a BMI of at least 27 kg/m2 and at least one co-morbidity...