Peptide News Digest

Lilly Brings Zepbound and Foundayo to Hims & Hers, Seeks UK Block on Fake-Drug Sites, Evaxion Melanoma Vaccine Data

Lilly opens Hims & Hers sales of Zepbound and Foundayo and asks a UK court to block fake-drug sites; Evaxion reports immune data for its melanoma vaccine.

12 stories · Covering industry, regulatory, clinical-trials, research

Editor's Note

Most of today's GLP-1 news is about distribution. Lilly will now fill Zepbound and Foundayo prescriptions written on Hims & Hers at its own self-pay prices, Abbott will sell a second brand of Novo's Ozempic across Asia Pacific, and the UAE added a diabetes indication for Foundayo. Lilly is also asking London's High Court to make six British internet providers block websites selling fake versions of its drugs, after the court's first medicine blocking order in May covered sites selling fake Novo semaglutide. NBC Bay Area's report on a Santa Cruz breast cancer survivor who injected BPC-157 from a med spa shows what remains outside those channels; no conclusive evidence links the peptide to her cancer's return, and she says she will always wonder. The non-GLP-1 items are early but concrete: Evaxion's T-cell data from 16 melanoma patients, a 240-patient pivotal trial of an engineered antibacterial peptide for infected knee replacements, and two lab studies. Three of today's human studies are observational or uncontrolled, and two of them spell out what their designs cannot show.

Industry

Lilly and Hims & Hers Agree to Offer Zepbound and Foundayo at Lilly's Self-Pay Prices on the Telehealth Platform

Patients prescribed Zepbound (tirzepatide) or Foundayo (orforglipron) by a provider on Hims & Hers can now get Lilly's self-pay prices without leaving the platform, starting at $149 a month for Foundayo and $299 a month for Zepbound, the companies announced November 6. The release says Hims & Hers has never offered compounded copies of Lilly's GLP-1 drugs and has committed not to, and that both companies will protect providers' independent prescribing decisions.

#eli-lilly #hims-hers #zepbound #foundayo #telehealth
Regulatory

NBC Bay Area: Santa Cruz Breast Cancer Survivor Who Injected BPC-157 From a Med Spa Warns Others After Her Cancer Returned

Paige Gordon told NBC Bay Area she bought an injectable "Glow Stack" containing BPC-157 from a nurse who ran an Aptos med spa, in January and was not told of any risks; she had been diagnosed with breast cancer about two and a half years ago, and the disease was found again about two months ago. The report notes there is no conclusive evidence BPC-157 contributed to her recurrence, and that concerns about peptides and tumor growth remain theoretical. It also covers HHS's October 28 policy allowing limited compounding of BPC-157 and five other unapproved peptides, which the Partnership for Safe Medicines' Shabbir Imber Safdar said the public has mistaken for an FDA approval.

#bpc-157 #peptide-compounding #gray-market #cancer
Regulatory

Lilly Asks London's High Court to Order BT, Sky, Virgin Media, and Other UK Internet Providers to Block Fake-Mounjaro Websites

Eli Lilly has filed a case in the English High Court, which appeared in the court's public system on Thursday, November 5, naming BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media as defendants, City AM reported. Under English law, a company seeking to shut out offshore sites that sell counterfeit goods must ask the court to order internet providers to block them. In May the court granted its first such order for medicines, covering sites selling counterfeit and unlicensed versions of Novo Nordisk's semaglutide.

#eli-lilly #mounjaro #uk #gray-market
Industry

Abbott Will Sell Plosbrio, a Second Brand of Novo Nordisk's Ozempic, in Singapore and Other Asia Pacific Markets

Under an expanded agreement announced November 5, Abbott will promote and distribute Plosbrio, semaglutide made by Novo Nordisk under a second brand name for Ozempic, for adults with type 2 diabetes in Singapore and other Asia Pacific countries. Abbott already sells Extensior, another second brand of Ozempic, in India, and the companies have linked Abbott's FreeStyle Libre glucose monitors with Novo's connected insulin pens since 2019.

#novo-nordisk #semaglutide #ozempic #type-2-diabetes
Clinical Trials

Evaxion's Personalized Peptide Vaccine EVX-01 Produced T Cells Detectable Without Lab Expansion in Melanoma Patients, Company Says at SITC

Evaxion reported at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer meeting in Phoenix that its AI-designed EVX-01 vaccine, given with Merck's Keytruda in a 16-patient Phase 2 trial in advanced melanoma, produced neoantigen-specific T cells that could be detected directly ex vivo. CD4+ T cells dominated those responses, and CD8+ responses appeared in half of patients. The trial previously reported objective responses in 12 of 16 patients at two years, including four complete responses, but it had no comparison arm.

#cancer-vaccine #peptide-vaccine #neoantigen #melanoma #ai-drug-discovery
Clinical Trials

Peptilogics Enrolls First U.K. Patient in 240-Person Pivotal Trial of Zaloganan, an Engineered Antibacterial Peptide for Infected Knee Replacements

Leeds Teaching Hospitals enrolled the first patient outside the U.S. in RETAIN (NCT07214311), a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2/3 trial of zaloganan (PLG0206) in people having their infected knee implant cleaned and kept in place rather than replaced. The trial plans about 240 patients at 50 sites in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, with treatment failure within 12 months as its primary endpoint. Peptilogics says one of 13 patients had a recurrence in its open-label Phase 1b study, compared with published 12-month failure rates of 35% to 55% under standard care, a comparison across different studies.

#antimicrobial-peptides #antibiotic-resistance #prosthetic-joint-infection #phase-3
Research

Mayo Clinic Arizona Review of 81 Patients Finds GLP-1 Drugs Were Tolerated About as Well With Delayed Stomach Emptying as Without

Gastroenterologists reviewed patients prescribed a GLP-1 drug after a gastric emptying scan: 14 had delayed emptying and 67 normal emptying. GI symptoms developed in 36% and 52%, and among those who stopped the drug, GI symptoms were the reason for 38% and 30%, differences that were not statistically significant. The authors say the small retrospective study does not support strictly avoiding GLP-1 drugs in gastroparesis, a condition often treated as a relative contraindication.

#gastroparesis #glp-1 #semaglutide #side-effects
Research

Bucharest Study of Men Starting Semaglutide or Liraglutide Finds Better Sperm Counts and Testosterone After 12 Months

Of 161 men with obesity or type 2 diabetes who started semaglutide or liraglutide, 108 completed 12 months. Average BMI fell from 37.5 to 31.3; sperm concentration rose from 62.9 to 86.7 million/mL, progressive motility from 22.8% to 38.4%, and total testosterone from 5.91 to 7.74 nmol/L. The Biomedicines paper says the lack of a control group and the loss of a third of participants, who were older and more often diabetic, rule out causal conclusions or claims about fertility.

#glp-1 #fertility #semaglutide #liraglutide
Research

Yale Researchers Turn a Peptide From Cholera Bacteria Biofilms Into an Underwater Glue

A Yale University team showed that a peptide derived from Vibrio cholerae biofilms adsorbs onto various surfaces and glues wet surfaces together, testing it with lap shear tests, atomic force microscopy, confocal microscopy, and molecular dynamics simulations. The peptide also clumped with microspheres, acting as a flocculant. Most underwater adhesive designs copy mussels and barnacles, and the Science Advances paper proposes bacterial biofilms as another model.

#biomaterials #adhesives #bacterial-biofilms
Research

Anhui University Redesign of the MAP 34-B Peptide Kills E. coli and Acinetobacter baumannii Within Two Hours in Lab Tests

Researchers at Anhui University and a Guangdong marine science lab designed two derivatives of the antimicrobial peptide MAP 34-B. MAP 34B-1 was more active against E. coli and the drug-resistant hospital pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii, cut bacterial viability within two hours by disrupting membranes, kept working under the salt and heat conditions tested, and caused less damage to mammalian cells and red blood cells than MAP 34B-2, the Journal of Peptide Science paper reports. The work was done in cell cultures only.

#antimicrobial-peptides #antibiotic-resistance #acinetobacter-baumannii
Research

Records of 169,657 New Semaglutide or Tirzepatide Users Show No Excess of Numbness or Nerve Damage Diagnoses After Calibration

nference researchers tracked 14 new sensory and peripheral nerve diagnoses for 12 months in U.S. health records. Among new GLP-1 users, 23.7% had one documented, most often reduced sensation (13.0%) or tingling (12.3%), and rates rose with baseline HbA1c rather than with weight lost. In 35,187 matched pairs, GLP-1 users had a lower rate than people starting metformin, DPP-4, or SGLT2 drugs (22.1% vs. 26.3%), but that difference was no longer significant after calibrating against negative-control outcomes (relative risk 0.85, 95% CI 0.58 to 1.25).

#semaglutide #tirzepatide #side-effects #real-world-evidence

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