The pandemic is pushing more people to seek treatment for obesity, Novo Nordisk’s top boss said on Aug. 5, referring to strong sales of the newly launched drug Wegovy, which helped the drugmaker raise its earnings forecast for full-year 2021.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and AstraZeneca today announced that the companies entered into a collaboration to research, develop and commercialize small molecule compounds directed against the GPR75 target with the potential to treat obesity and related co-morbidities.

A made-in-Canada life sciences company, Nimium Therapeutics, launched to develop novel therapies for patients with cardiometabolic diseases.

Seattle-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Lumen Bioscience is teaming up with Novo Nordisk to explore research and development opportunities within obesity, among other metabolic disorders.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 4 approved Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s once-weekly semaglutide drug as a treatment for obesity, a condition that affects nearly 70% of American adults.

Novo Nordisk is positioning the company’s type 2 diabetes treatment Ozempic (semaglutide) as an anti-obesity treatment, as data published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the once-weekly dose of the glucagon-like peptide-1 analog significantly reduced weight in patients over the course of 68 weeks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Rhythm Pharmaceuticals’ Imcivree (setmelanotide) for chronic weight management in adult and pediatric patients aged 6 years and older with obesity due to proopiomelanocortin, proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 1 or leptin receptor deficiency confirmed by genetic testing.

The coronavirus has been a far deadlier threat in New Orleans than the rest of the United States, with a per-capita death rate almost three times that of New York City. Doctors, public health officials and available data say the Big Easy’s high levels of obesity and related ailments may be part of the problem.

Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly is adding 462 new jobs in Durham County, North Carolina over five years.

Cancer deaths in the United States fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017 – the largest single-year drop ever recorded – fueled in large part by progress against lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reported.