NORTH CHICAGO, Illinois, March 10, 2026, 14:19 CDT.
AbbVie said on Monday its experimental obesity drug ABBV-295 helped adults lose up to 9.79% of their body weight in 12 weeks in an early-stage study, giving the drugmaker its clearest sign yet that it may have a contender in a market led by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. The company said no serious adverse events were reported.
The readout matters because AbbVie is hunting for fresh growth after Humira ran into biosimilar competition, and because investors are still focused on how much room the company has beyond its core immunology business. William Blair analyst Matt Phipps said in February investors had “concerns about growing competition” in that franchise, even as AbbVie told the market Skyrizi and Rinvoq should generate about $31.6 billion in 2026. Reuters
AbbVie has been putting money behind the shift. Last month it said it would spend $380 million to expand Illinois manufacturing for obesity and neuroscience medicines, and earlier this year it described obesity as a market projected to generate about $150 billion a year over the next decade. The company has said it likes amylin-based medicines — drugs that mimic a pancreas hormone to curb appetite and slow digestion — because they may offer better tolerability than GLP-1 shots such as Novo’s Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound; Chief Medical Officer Roopal Thakkar said the focus was “tolerability and durability of weight loss.” Reuters
AbbVie said the 76-patient phase 1 study tested doses from 2 mg to 14 mg across weekly, every-other-week and monthly schedules after week 5. Weekly dosing produced 7.75% to 9.79% average weight loss at week 12, while less-frequent schedules produced 7.86% to 9.73% at week 13, versus roughly flat placebo results. Primal Kaur, AbbVie’s senior vice president for global development, said the data showed “meaningful weight loss together with a well-tolerated safety profile.” AbbVie News Center
The figures are hard to line up against rival programs because the studies ran for different lengths of time and enrolled different patients. Still, Lilly said in November that its mid-stage amylin drug eloralintide helped patients lose as much as 20.1% after 48 weeks, while Roche and Zealand Pharma reported up to 10.7% weight loss over 42 weeks with petrelintide last week.
But this is early data. Phase 1 trials are mainly used to test safety, not settle how well a drug will work in broad patient groups, and AbbVie said the study population had a mean body mass index, or BMI, below 30, with 88.3% male; ABBV-295 is not approved anywhere. Morningstar analyst Karen Andersen said of amylin readouts that it is “really hard to compare these trials” when patient mix shifts, adding that women have tended to respond better than men. PR Newswire
AbbVie licensed the candidate from Denmark’s Gubra in March 2025, agreeing to pay $350 million upfront and up to $1.875 billion more in milestones in what it called its entry into obesity. The company said full data from the current study will be presented at a future scientific conference.
AbbVie shares were little changed on Tuesday and were down about 0.3% in afternoon U.S. trading at $226.81.
