The next obesity medicines are aiming at 25 percent of body weight

Mounjaro reduced body weight by 19.5 percent after 72 weeks, and the endocrinologist who identified glucagon-like peptides in the early 1980s says the compounds now in development look poised to reach 25 percent in many people. The mechanism has not moved since he found it: GLP-1 receptor agonists copy a gut hormone that tells the brain it has had enough.

Amgen's MariTide, given monthly rather than weekly, is in trials and appears to hold weight loss for four to five months after the last injection. A different design out of Queen Mary University in London, called Elcella, skips synthetic hormones altogether and uses targeted nutrients to make the gut release its own peptides, which its lead researcher argues could end up far cheaper. Dozens of new molecules and new delivery systems sit behind those two.

None of this is available yet. MariTide sits in trials and Elcella is still laboratory work, and the next test is whether bigger trials reproduce what the early ones showed.

Price decides the current generation, not chemistry. A private prescription in the UK runs about £180 to £200 a month, and a UCL professor of psychology and epidemiology notes that these medicines treat obesity once it has developed and will not stop it developing in the first place.

Read the full story at Men's Health ↗

Retatrutide is investigational and is not FDA-approved. Other medicines referenced here are covered as third-party news for educational awareness only. Catalyst does not present this information as medical advice, treatment guidance, or a claim of safety, efficacy, or approval.