Clinical trial coverage on Peptide News Digest pulls in Phase 1 through Phase 3 readouts across the peptide universe — GLP-1 obesity and cardiometabolic trials (SELECT, SURMOUNT-4, ACHIEVE-3, REDEFINE-1, SYNCHRONIZE-1), peptide vaccine work (AMPLIFY-201, MEL39), peptide-drug conjugate trials, and antimicrobial peptide programs.
Most of the noise sits with Lilly and Novo, but the interesting reads are usually elsewhere: Bicycle Therapeutics on solid tumors, Lirum on Ewing sarcoma, Cerapedics on lumbar fusion, Pelage on hair loss. Real-world evidence and registry data also land here when they reframe what the randomized trials showed.
Each entry names the sponsor, the phase, and the endpoint. Browse the latest below, or jump to the readouts by drug at #semaglutide, #tirzepatide, or #orforglipron.
Johnson & Johnson said on October 9, 2026, at the Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference, that in the Phase 3 ICONIC-LEAD trial of its oral IL-23 receptor-blocking peptide Icotyde (icotrokinra) in 684 people aged 12 and older with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, at least 70% of treated patients had clear or almost clear skin, at least 44% had completely clear skin by PASI 100, and at least 72% reached PASI 90 at week 112. Among people who reached PASI 90, stopped the drug at week 24, and later restarted it, 85% regained that response within 24 weeks. The release does not say how patients who left the study were counted, and J&J reported no new safety signals.
Oncopeptides reported on October 9, 2026 that in the open-label INSULA window-of-opportunity study at Oslo University Hospital, active drug was found in resected tumor tissue from the first three patients with recurrent glioblastoma given melflufen, its EMA-approved peptide-drug conjugate, before surgery, meeting the study's primary goal of showing the drug crosses the blood-brain barrier. The company said tumor drug levels matched what animal studies predicted but gave no numbers, and the study is not designed to show clinical benefit. It plans to enroll about 10 patients and will discuss the data in an investor webcast on October 12.
Viking Therapeutics said on October 6, 2026 that it had started Part 2 of its maintenance study of VK2735, its GLP-1 and GIP dual agonist. About 195 adults with obesity who took weekly VK2735 injections or placebo for 21 weeks in Part 1 are being randomized to daily or weekly oral doses, monthly or every-other-week injections, or placebo through week 33, with safety, tolerability, and drug levels as the main goals and weight change as an exploratory measure. Viking expects results in 2027; its two Phase 3 VANQUISH trials, with about 4,500 and 1,000 participants, are fully enrolled.
Zealand Pharma reported topline results on October 7, 2026 from ZUPREME-2, a 28-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial of once-weekly petrelintide in 220 U.S. adults with overweight or obesity and type 2 diabetes, who started with an average BMI of 36.3 and HbA1c of 8.0%. Across three dose groups, average weight fell 7.4% to 9.2% versus 2.0% on placebo, measured as if everyone had stayed on treatment, and HbA1c fell by up to 0.65 percentage points while it rose 0.23 points on placebo. Only 1.9% of people on petrelintide stopped because of stomach side effects, versus 1.7% on placebo; the drug, partnered with Roche, entered Phase 3 in September, and Zealand plans to present full results at a scientific meeting.
MimiVax and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center reported on October 7, 2026 that in SURVIVE, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2b trial in 233 evaluable patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma at 11 U.S. centers, adding SurVaxM to standard treatment gave a median overall survival of 22.8 months versus 20.3 months on placebo (hazard ratio 0.75, p=0.076), short of statistical significance. In a prespecified group of patients 65 and under, median survival was 24.2 versus 20.2 months (hazard ratio 0.64, p=0.019), and about 42% versus 18% were alive at 30 months or later. SurVaxM is a peptide-mimic vaccine aimed at survivin, a protein found in about 95% of glioblastomas; grade 3 or higher side effects occurred in 48% versus 46% of patients, and MimiVax plans to ask the FDA about faster approval routes.
A Phase 3 trial published October 7, 2026 in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism randomized 462 Chinese adults with obesity (BMI of 28 or higher) and no diabetes at 30 centers to once-weekly HD1916, a semaglutide made by chemical synthesis instead of in yeast, or to Novo Nordisk's Wegovy for 44 weeks. Weight fell 13.1% with HD1916 and 14.4% with Wegovy, a 1.35-percentage-point gap that stayed inside the preset equivalence margin of 4.16 points, and 87.8% versus 90.5% lost at least 5% of their body weight. The open-label trial was sponsored by the drug's developer, CSPC Baike (Shandong) Biopharmaceutical, whose employees are among the authors; side effects of any grade occurred in 86.5% and 89.2% of participants, mostly mild to moderate.
Full results of OUTSTAND-2, published in Nature Medicine on Monday, October 5, 2026, come from 810 adults in China with type 2 diabetes not controlled on metformin, randomized to once-daily safiglipron (HRS-7535) 30, 60, or 90 mg or the SGLT2 inhibitor dapagliflozin 10 mg for 32 weeks. HbA1c fell 0.22 to 0.40 percentage points more on safiglipron, meeting the non-inferiority goal at every dose, and the 90 mg dose also passed the superiority test; weight loss was similar (2.35% to 4.17% on safiglipron versus 3.60% on dapagliflozin). Gastrointestinal side effects were more common on safiglipron, 3.9% to 4.0% stopped for adverse events versus 1.5% on dapagliflozin, Hengrui funded the trial, whose topline results were announced in July.
Novo Nordisk reported on Thursday, October 1, 2026, at EASD in Milan, a post hoc, exploratory analysis pooling 1,919 adults from its STEP UP and STEP UP T2D trials who took Wegovy 7.2 mg, Wegovy 2.4 mg, or placebo. In a 55-person subgroup whose liver fat was measured by MRI, average liver fat fell from 8.8% at baseline to 3.1% at week 72, and 23 of the 26 participants who started above the 5% threshold for fatty liver ended below it. Liver fat was not a prespecified endpoint of either trial, and Novo pooled the two Wegovy doses for the MRI result.
Johnson & Johnson reported two-year results on Friday, October 2, 2026, at the EADV Congress in Vienna from the Phase 3 ICONIC-TOTAL trial of Icotyde (icotrokinra), a once-daily oral peptide that blocks the IL-23 receptor, in 311 people aged 12 and older with psoriasis on the scalp, genitals, hands, or feet (208 on icotrokinra and 103 on placebo, who switched to the drug at week 16). Among icotrokinra-treated patients, the share with clear or almost clear skin rose from 57% at week 16 to 70% at week 112, and 60% of those with scalp psoriasis, 89% with genital psoriasis, and 63% with hand or foot psoriasis had complete clearance at those sites. Missing data after week 52 were handled with multiple imputation, and J&J reported no new safety signals.
A Phase 2 trial of ribupatide, the weekly GLP-1/GIP dual agonist injection that Hengrui licensed to Kailera Therapeutics outside Greater China, enrolled 158 Chinese women aged 18 to 40 with obesity or overweight and polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS). After 32 weeks, weight fell 10% on 1 mg, 15.1% on 2 mg, and 20.2% on 4 mg versus 2.6% on placebo, according to an EASD abstract reported by BioSpace on Friday, October 2, 2026. All three ribupatide groups had more frequent menstrual cycles, while cycles became less frequent on placebo, and there were no serious adverse events or adverse events that led to stopping the study.
Evaxion said on Friday, October 2, 2026 that it will present new immune data from its Phase 2 trial of EVX-01, a personalized, AI-designed peptide cancer vaccine given with Merck's Keytruda (pembrolizumab) to 16 patients with advanced melanoma, at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer meeting in Phoenix, with an oral presentation on November 6. Previously reported two-year results showed objective responses in 12 of 16 patients (75%), including four complete responses, and tumor-specific immune responses to 86% of the vaccine's neoantigen targets. Each patient receives a vaccine designed and manufactured from their own tumor's biology.
Lundbeck reported headline results on Thursday, October 1, 2026 from THRIVE, an open-label Phase 4 trial of Vyepti (eptinezumab), an antibody against the neuropeptide CGRP, in 164 adults with at least eight monthly migraine days whose migraine had responded inadequately to one prior CGRP-targeting preventive, either a subcutaneous antibody or a gepant. Patients received 100 mg at baseline and 300 mg at week 12; at week 24, 60% rated themselves much or very much improved on the Patient Global Impression of Change scale, up from 44% at week 12, and 84% completed the study. There was no placebo group, and Lundbeck said no new safety signals were seen.
Lilly presented the Phase 3 ACHIEVE-4 trial of its oral small-molecule GLP-1 drug Foundayo (orforglipron) at EASD on Thursday, October 1, 2026, alongside publication in The Lancet. In 2,749 adults with type 2 diabetes, overweight or obesity, and increased cardiovascular risk, Foundayo met its noninferiority goal against insulin glargine for cardiovascular death, heart attack, stroke, or hospitalization for unstable angina (MACE-4 hazard ratio 0.84; 95% CI 0.59 to 1.20); the three-part MACE-3 hazard ratio was 0.77 (95% CI 0.52 to 1.13). At 52 weeks, A1C fell 1.6 points versus 1.0 and weight fell 8.8% versus a 1.7% gain on glargine. Lilly also reported a lower rate of death from any cause (hazard ratio 0.43) but described that analysis as exploratory and not controlled for multiple comparisons; 10.6% of Foundayo patients stopped treatment because of adverse events.
Boehringer Ingelheim and partner Zealand Pharma reported on Thursday, October 1, 2026 that the Phase 3 SYNCHRONIZE-2 trial of survodutide, a weekly glucagon/GLP-1 receptor dual agonist, met its co-primary endpoints in 755 adults with obesity or overweight and type 2 diabetes; the results were presented at EASD and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. At 76 weeks, under the efficacy estimand, weight fell up to 13.1% on survodutide (3.6 mg and 6.0 mg doses were tested) versus 3.1% on placebo, and HbA1c fell up to 1.21 points from a baseline of 7.4% versus 0.03. Eighteen percent of survodutide patients stopped treatment because of gastrointestinal side effects, versus 1.2% on placebo, and Zealand's shares fell 11.7% in Copenhagen, according to Investing.com.
Kailera Therapeutics said on Wednesday, September 30, 2026 that it has finished enrolling about 4,900 adults in the three-trial KaiNETIC Phase 3 program for ribupatide, a weekly GLP-1/GIP dual agonist licensed from Hengrui, including KaiNETIC-3, which compares ribupatide with semaglutide 2.4 mg in about 1,200 people with a BMI of 35 or higher. Each trial runs 76 weeks with titration up to 10 mg, and topline results are expected in mid-2028. At EASD on October 1, Kailera reported a 51-person Phase 1 study in which ribupatide exposure after injection in the upper arm or thigh was similar to abdominal injection, and early Phase 1 data for the triple agonist HRS-4729 showing 16.0% mean weight loss at week 12 on 12 mg in 10 participants.
Lilly presented full results of TRIUMPH-2 at EASD on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, alongside publication in The Lancet: 1,152 adults with obesity or overweight and type 2 diabetes were randomized to weekly retatrutide 4, 9, or 12 mg or placebo for 80 weeks. Under the efficacy estimand, weight fell 12.7%, 19.1%, and 20.8% versus 4.0% with placebo, A1C fell 1.4, 1.6, and 1.5 points versus 0.2, 59.5% of people on 12 mg no longer met BMI criteria for obesity, and up to 40.0% reached an A1C below 5.7%. Discontinuation for adverse events was 3.8%, 11.6%, and 7.7% versus 4.9% on placebo, and dysesthesia, abnormal skin sensations, occurred in 4.5% to 7.3% of retatrutide patients versus 0.7%. Lilly plans to submit retatrutide to the FDA in the first quarter of 2027.
Lilly announced on Wednesday, September 30, 2026 Phase 2b results for EloraTZP, the amylin receptor agonist eloralintide given with tirzepatide as separate injections, in 367 adults with obesity or overweight and type 2 diabetes across 10 arms. At 48 weeks, under the efficacy estimand, eloralintide 9 mg plus tirzepatide 15 mg produced 23.3% weight loss versus 14.8% with tirzepatide 15 mg alone and 3.0% with placebo, and A1C fell 2.9 points versus 2.4 and 0.3 from a baseline near 8.1%. Discontinuation for adverse events was 10.8% to 27.0% with the combinations, 2.9% with tirzepatide alone, and 16.7% with placebo, and gastrointestinal events were more frequent on the combinations. Lilly plans to start Phase 3 trials of a co-formulated EloraTZP product by the end of 2026 with an adjusted dose-escalation schedule.
Sciwind Biosciences reported at EASD on Wednesday, September 30, 2026 a Phase 1b, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of ecnoglutide, its cAMP-biased GLP-1 receptor agonist approved in China for adults, in 48 adolescents aged 12 to 17 with obesity whose BMI had fallen less than 5% after at least 12 weeks of diet and exercise. After 20 weeks on 1.2, 1.8, or 2.4 mg, BMI fell 11.2% to 12.6% and body weight 10.4% to 12.1%, versus 0.0% and a 1.2% gain on placebo. There were no treatment-related serious adverse events, most side effects were mild, transient gastrointestinal reactions, and drug exposure resembled that in adults; Sciwind said a Phase 3 adolescent trial has begun.