Healthy Returns: Here’s what GLP-1s are being tested for beyond weight loss, diabetes

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Good afternoon! The list of potential health benefits from a booming class of weight loss and diabetes drugs is only growing longer. 

New mid-stage trial data on Tuesday showed that Novo Nordisk‘s older, once-daily GLP-1 for diabetes and obesity called liraglutide may slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease by protecting patients’ brains. 

Just a day earlier, a new study found that semaglutide – the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s weight loss injection Wegovy and diabetes counterpart Ozempic – may also help people quit smoking. 

Those GLP-1 treatments mimic hormones produced in the gut to suppress a person’s appetite and regulate blood sugar. Researchers also believe that the drugs may help treat other conditions through additional effects on the body, such as reducing inflammation. 

But far more research is needed to confirm that. Larger and longer trials are also necessary before regulators can approve any weight loss and diabetes drugs for additional uses. 

In the first major step to allow wider use of the drugs, the Food and Drug Administration in March cleared Wegovy for slashing the risk of serious heart complications. 

Additional approvals for the drug and other weight loss medications could put more pressure on insurers to cover the treatments, many of which can cost roughly $1,000 per month. Spotty insurance coverage for Wegovy and other treatments for weight loss has been a major barrier to access for patients. 

Here are some of the other conditions that GLP-1s are being tested for: 

Cardiovascular health 

• Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy slashed the overall risk of heart attack, stroke and death from cardiovascular causes by 20% in patients with obesity and heart disease in a late-stage trial. 
• Wegovy helped people with obesity, diabetes and heart failure have fewer cardiovascular symptoms like fatigue and breathlessness in a large trial. 
• Eli Lilly is conducting a late-stage trial on tirzepatide – the active ingredient in its weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro – for patients with obesity and heart failure. The study is expected to be completed this month.

Chronic kidney disease

• Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic delayed the progression of chronic kidney disease in diabetes patients, cutting the risk of death from that and major cardiac events by 24% in a late-stage trial. 
• Eli Lilly is studying tirzepatide in a mid-stage study in patients with obesity and chronic kidney disease. The trial is expected to end in 2026.   

Fatty liver disease

• Eli Lilly’s Zepbound helped up to 74% of patients become free of the disease with no worsening of liver scarring, compared with 13% of people who did not receive the treatment at 52 weeks in a mid-stage trial. 
• Novo Nordisk is studying semaglutide in a late-stage trial for a common type of fatty liver disease. 
• Other drugmakers, such as Zealand Pharma, Viking Therapeutics, and Altimmune are also studying their respective weight loss or diabetes treatments in patients with fatty liver disease. 

Sleep apnea

• Eli Lilly’s Zepbound helped resolve moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in up to 52% of patients in two late-stage trials. The FDA is currently reviewing Zepbound for that use. 

Alzheimer’s disease

Addiction

• Outside researchers are studying the potential of GLP-1s to curb addictive behaviors, including nicotine and alcohol use.
• Novo Nordisk is planning a study with a secondary goal of seeing whether semaglutide and other treatments can change daily alcohol consumption, according to the U.S. government‘s clinical trials registry. The main goal of mid-stage trial is measuring the drugs’ impact on liver scarring in patients with alcoholic-relate liver disease. 

Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

Heads of Commure, Augmedix share details about new acquisition

The health-care sector can’t get enough of AI documentation tools. Just ask the chief executives of Commure and Augmedix.

Commure offers a suite of solutions, including an AI scribe and a revenue cycle service, designed to help lessen clinicians’ administrative workloads. The company was co-founded in 2017 by Hemant Taneja, the CEO and managing director of the venture capital firm General Catalyst.

Earlier this month, Commure revealed a new addition to its portfolio: it’s acquiring a separate AI scribing company called Augmedix.  

Augmedix, founded in 2012, was one of the first companies to introduce AI-powered ambient medical documentation to hospitals and health systems. These tools help doctors save time by recording their conversations with patients and automatically turning them into clinical notes and summaries using AI. Augmedix specializes in deploying the technology in settings like emergency departments.

On July 19, Commure agreed to take Augmedix private in an all-cash deal. Commure will purchase all of Augmedix’s outstanding common stock at a total equity value of about $139 million, according to a release. Augmedix shareholders will receive $2.35 per share. The company’s board unanimously approved the deal, the release said. 

CNBC caught up with Commure CEO Tanay Tandon and Augmedix CEO Manny Krakaris on Monday to learn a little more about the acquisition and what it means for both organizations. 

Tandon said the two companies initially met to talk about partnership opportunities since they both are vendors for HCA Healthcare, one of the largest health systems in the U.S. But as discussions got underway, he said they realized the organizations could come together in a more comprehensive manner. 

Commure already has an ambient documentation tool, but it specializes in ambulatory and outpatient settings, while Augmedix’s offering specializes in acute care settings. The companies decided to bring the tools together to minimize the friction that can come from documenting separate pieces of a patient’s care.     

“You have to have documentation that covers the entire journey. It doesn’t just stop when they leave the [emergency department], and then restart again when they’re admitted into the hospital as an inpatient,” Krakaris said.”Today, there’s a whole massive, labor intensive step to try to bridge those two worlds.” 

Tandon said there’s a lot of noise in the AI scribe market, and he expects there will be segmentation between high-level scribes that automate simple tasks and enterprise-grade scribes that integrate more deeply with electronic health records and revenue cycles. 

Commure is interested in building the latter, and Krakaris said the real value of the Augmedix acquisition will come from bringing the tools together and blending the back-end technologies under one platform.

“It’s kind of beneath the surface, it’s kind of like an iceberg, but that’s where the value creation is,” he said. “It’s not something that’s very visible from the application itself.” 

In the short term, Commure and Augmedix are working through the relevant approvals and finalizing the deal with shareholders. Once that is complete, they will begin planning new deployments and approaching customers with the combined solution. 

The companies are still working out exactly what the acquisition will mean for the Augmedix brand, but it will likely look something like “Augmedix powered by Commure,” Tandon said. 

“If we do this integration well, and if we do our job well here, there will be a best in class product that actually solves many of these problems in the office, and then all the tasks that happen after the patient’s gone as well,” he said. 

Read the full release about the deal here.

Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.