Lexaria Bioscience announces partial 12-week results from WEIGHT-A24-1 study

Lexaria Bioscience (LEXX) has received partial 12-week body weight results from the recently completed animal study WEIGHT-A24-1. Lexaria is “strongly encouraged” that the DehydraTECH-liraglutide and select DehydraTECH-CBD groups B, C, and D outperformed all three of the Rybelsus and semaglutide DehydraTECH composition groups regardless of whether the semaglutide had or had not been processed with the salcaprozate sodium technology known as “SNAC”. Rybelsus, which utilizes Novo Nordisk’s proprietary SNAC technology, is the world’s only orally administered GLP-1 drug brand. This Study is the world’s first to evaluate the relative performance of liraglutide processed with DehydraTECH. In humans, semaglutide has been shown in other studies to be more than twice as effective at promoting weight loss as liraglutide . Thus, the outperformance of DehydraTECH-liraglutide compared to DehydraTECH-semaglutide is of notable interest. In this Study, the processed liraglutide in Study group H was administered orally even though it is injected when used by patients under the brand names Saxenda or Victoza. Lexaria notes that it has already filed patent applications to recognize the unique outperformance of liraglutide once processed with DehydraTECH delivery technology. Readers are cautioned to not compare results of this animal study to human weight loss studies, primarily because unlimited food and water has been provided to the animals for the entire duration of this Study. Offered unlimited food, many rats will reach morbid obesity. The primary value in this Study is the relative performance of the different Study groups, which has provided directional evidence for additional future work. For context, in an older Lexaria diabetic animal study DIAB-A22-1 reported on March 2, 2023 , the obese control group of animals that received no drug treatment , experienced 3.04% weight gain during the first 28 days of that study. During the initial acclimation phase of 34 days before the beginning of dosing in this Study, the animals gained 10.9% body weight on average. Actual weight decreases or slower rates of weight gain have since been achieved in the 12 weeks of dosing in all Study groups receiving DehydraTECH drug therapies. Importantly, accelerated rates of weight loss were experienced in all DehydraTECH groups during the final 4 weeks of the study. Additional data from this Study is pending including blood glucose findings from the animals reported herein, as well as body weight and blood glucose findings from the second study cohort that included positive and vehicle control arms. Analyses of brain and blood absorption pharmacokinetic results is also underway, although unforeseen delays at the third-party laboratories involved is affecting timing of completion of this work. Lexaria is working with these laboratories to minimize further delays and will report on these data as soon as possible.