On Monday, Novo Nordisk announced that the results from its Phase 3 trial investigating semaglutide as a treatment for Alzheimer’s “did not confirm the superiority of semaglutide versus placebo in the reduction of progression,” of the disease, according to the press release.
Monday’s announcement had a silver lining. That is, the treatment did result in an improvement of Alzheimer’s disease-related biomarkers. However, this did not slow the disease progression and the trials did not confirm the superiority of semaglutide over placebo.
“Based on the significant unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as well as a number of indicative data points, we felt we had a responsibility to explore semaglutide’s potential, despite a low likelihood of success,” said Martin Holst Lange, chief scientific officer and executive vice president of Research and Development at Novo Nordisk.
Despite the negative results, scientists and doctors are not ruling out GLP-1s as a potential Alzheimer’s treatment or preventive. “I’m eager to see the trials’ biomarker findings and other details of the study next week, including any findings that might help the field consider its potential benefits in cognitively unimpaired people,” Eric Reiman, chief executive of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Arizona told Reuters.
The full results will be presented at the 2026 Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases Conference in March 2026.
It seems Novo’s risk in taking on this study despite limited evidence did not pay off. After the announcement, Novo shares fell to a four-year low. The stock was down 10% Monday afternoon, but recovered slightly, closing at 5.8% lower.
The stock rose 4.61% on Tuesday afternoon after the company announced favorable results of another trial. The results showed that amycretin, another GLP-1, showed statistically significant weight loss of up to 14.5% at 36 weeks.
Amycretin is a dual GLP-1 and amylin agonist being tested in people with type 2 diabetes whose blood sugar remains poorly controlled on metformin and SGLT2 inhibitors. In a 448 patient mid stage trial, once weekly injections or oral tablets led to up to 14.5% weight loss at 36 weeks with mostly mild to moderate gastrointestinal side effects, and Novo now plans to move amycretin into late stage trials in 2026. Analysts already see the drug as a potential successor to semaglutide that could help sustain Novo’s obesity and diabetes business after key semaglutide patents start to expire in the early 2030s.
Evidence for the potential of GLP-1 as an AD treatment
Evidence from large population studies suggest that GLP-1s might reduce a patient’s risk of AD or dementia. A study in JAMA Neurology found that people with type 2 diabetes aged 50 and older who were taking GLP-1s had 33% less risk of developing dementia compared to those on other diabetes medications.
A 2024 study found that semaglutide was associated with significantly reduced risk of an AD diagnosis when compared to insulin and other GLP-1 RAs. Liraglutide, another GLP-1, was found to reduce shrinking in the parts of the brain responsible for memory, language, learning and decision making by almost 50% compared with placebo.
Filed Under: Neurological Disease
