Insights from Vivani
What excites you most about participating in the 3rd Obesity & Weight Loss West Coast Summit this year?
I look forward to learning about drug development approaches aimed at potentializing the real-world impact of the extraordinary medicines under development. As we begin to better understand the biological mechanisms underlying obesity, I believe that our industry can exert extraordinary impact by focusing on addressing real-world challenges such as medication adherence and persistence.
As the field continues to evolve beyond first-generation therapies, what are the key trends or developments you hope to discuss with fellow leaders at the meeting?
I am particularly eager to discuss the various ways in which the industry is working to provide solutions to the maintenance-phase of obesity treatment. The number of people who discontinue before long-term health outcomes or value to payers can be realized is far too great, and I believe that, since the problem of weight loss is well addressed by existing therapies, maintenance-phase treatments represent the next frontier for this therapeutic category.
Can you give us a preview of the insights you'll be sharing on behalf of Vivani and why they're important for the future of obesity drug development?
I intend to explore the many reasons why discontinuation rates are so high, generally around 60% by year 1, including tolerability, access, and other aspects of human behavior. I anticipate elaborating on the consequences associated with these high discontinuation rates, including rapid weight rebound, and how Vivani’s reversible ultra-long-acting GLP-1 therapy candidates are designed to make staying on treatment more tolerable, more accessible, and more convenient. Imagine a world where staying on therapy was easy and missing doses or discontinuing treatment was difficult.
If you could solve one major challenge facing obesity drug development today, what would it be and why?
Now that we have incredible medicines that are capable of meaningful weight loss with acceptable tolerability, the one major challenge I would solve is maintaining the health of these patients for the remainder of their lives. Overcoming this challenge will allow the general population to realize the same long-term health benefits such as reduced cardiovascular risk as has been realized in controlled trials during which adherence and persistence rates are much higher and will thus enable these medicines to achieve their true potential.
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