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Shares of diabetes giant Novo Nordisk ( NVO ) jumped Friday after the company said its drug Victoza reduced heart attacks and strokes. Novo released few details about the results of the study, which it’s saving for the next American Diabetes Association meeting in June. However, it did say that there was a statistically significant reduction in all three of its metrics — heart attack, stroke and death from all cardiovascular causes — among the 9,000 patients taking the diabetes drug over five years, compared to the placebo group. The subjects were all over age 50 and either had cardiovascular disease or multiple risk factors. Novo Nordisk’s stock was up about 8% in afternoon trading on the stock market today , near 57. It’s the highest-rated stock in the low-rated Medical-Ethical Drugs group, with a Composite Rating of 82. The effect of diabetes drugs on cardiovascular health has been the subject of several studies lately, notably from Eli Lilly ( LLY ), whose drug Jardiance reduced deaths from heart failure by 32% in a similar large, long-term study reported last September. On the other hand, Merck ‘s ( MRK ) Januvia showed no effect either good or bad in its outcomes trial reported a few months earlier. A similarly neutral result was reported for an outcomes trial of the Sanofi ( SNY ) drug Elixa, which is noteworthy because Elixa is in the same class as Victoza. Both are glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogs, similar to Bydureon from AstraZeneca ( AZN ) and Lilly’s Trulicity, while Jardiance is an sglt2 inhibitor, in the same class as Invokana from Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ ) and Farxiga from AstraZeneca. Merck’s Januvia belongs to another class, called DPP-4 inhibitors. On a conference call with analysts Friday, Novo’s Chief Scientific Officer Mads Thomsen said that the different results may have come from subtle differences between the drugs, which he thinks extend to Victoza’s planned successor, semaglutide. “It’s not only the question of being a member of the given class of GLP-1 agonist,” said Thomsen. “It’s also a part of the kinetics, dynamics, distribution, half-life, and so on. And as we got semaglutide, we have done rather detailed investigations. . . . There is nothing from the animal pharmacology to negate the notion that semaglutide should do at least as well on cardiovascular performance.” Scalper1 News
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