gizmodo.com
The future of weight loss treatment is looking to get easier to swallow. Several research teams and pharmaceutical companies are developing promising GLP-1-based drugs that come in a pill rather than an injection.
Just this month alone, two separate teams published Phase II trial data on their oral GLP-1 candidates. These drugs, called aleniglipron and elecoglipron, appeared to deliver weight loss outcomes comparable to existing options. Still other pill-based candidates are coming along in the pipeline.
## Small molecule GLP-1s
GLP-1 is a peptide hormone that helps regulate our hunger; GLP-1 drugs (formally known as receptor agonists) mimic this hormone to help people lose weight in various ways, such as by reducing people’s food cravings.
Currently, GLP-1s and similar hormone-based weight loss drugs are typically taken as a weekly subcutaneous injection, and historically, it’s proven difficult to create effective pill versions of them. Synthetic GLP-1 mimics like semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy) are big peptide molecules, and when digested as a pill, barely any of the drug can reach the bloodstream since the molecules are easily broken down by our stomach acid.
In recent years, though, pharmaceutical companies and their researchers have crafted workarounds to this issue. The oral Wegovy pill, approved in late 2025, contains an absorption enhancer called SNAC (salcaprozate sodium) that acts as a protective shield against stomach acid, allowing more semaglutide to reach our system. Other companies have developed small molecule mimics that can more easily survive the journey through the stomach, such as Eli Lilly’s ofolifeigron, approved under the brand name Foundayo earlier this April.
Plenty of companies are now looking to follow in Eli Lilly’s footsteps with their own small molecule weight loss drugs.
Astrazeneca, for instance, is developing the drug elecoglipron. Last week, researchers unveiled the latest data on the drug from two randomized and placebo-controlled Phase II trials, both of which were published in the Lancet. People taking once-daily elecoglipron lost up to 11.8% of their body weight over a 36-week period, the data showed.
Structure Therapeutics, meanwhile, is developing the drug aleniglipron, and its latest results are remarkably similar. In a Phase II trial published this month in Nature Medicine, people taking once-daily aleniglipron lost up to 12.1% body weight over a 36-week span.
In both cases, the results were compelling enough for these companies to push further ahead with Phase III trials, which could provide the data needed for drug approval.
“We didn’t find any concerns; no new safety signals. We found a dose that seems to be effective, and the dose escalation will be slowed down further as we go into the phase III trial to increase tolerability,” said Robert Kushner, professor emeritus of medicine at Northwestern University and one of the co-authors of the Nature paper on aleniglipron, in a statement from the university.
## The future of weight loss pills
There are plenty of other GLP-1-based pill candidates being developed. This includes Roche’s CT-996, Ascletis’ ASC30, and Viking Therapeutics’ VK2735, which is being developed both as a traditional subcutaneous injection and oral tablet.
Of course, it’s no guarantee that any of these oral drugs will necessarily reach the finish line and secure regulatory approval. And even if these companies do succeed, they’ll be facing a crowded market headlined by the current big dogs, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk (the makers of semaglutide). Some of the injectable treatments currently available or about to reach the public also have their own advantages, such as Eli Lilly’s upcoming retatrutide, which has shown the best trial results of any weight loss drug to date (up to 30% weight loss)
Still, for consumers, pharmaceutical competition over a drug class does tend to lead to lower prices overall. And many people are likely to prefer the convenience of a GLP-1 pill even if it’s not necessarily the best around, judging by the impressive sales launch of oral Wegovy this year. So with any luck, there will soon be a smorgasbord of effective weight loss treatments for people to pick from.
