The Latest Venture to Preserve Muscle Mass in Weight Loss Patients

Anti-obesity medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro have taken the weight loss market by storm in the past few years. What once required patience and a healthier lifestyle can now be found in the form of a weekly injection pen that reduces your appetite to practically nil.  

While these GLP-1 receptor agonists are highly effective at causing weight loss in patients with obesity, this weight loss isn’t just fatty tissue – it’s muscle mass too.  

As a result, several drugmakers are on a mission to overcome this complication and hopefully bring about safer, more sustainable weight loss options. Most recently, Harbour BioMed launched a new entity called Élancé Therapeutics. This biotech will specifically focus on reducing body mass while preserving muscle and hopes to provide a better alternative to GLP-1s. 

One of the problems with weight loss medications  

GLP-1 injections cause weight loss by reducing hunger signals and shrinking appetite. As well as physically making patients less hungry, the drug slows down gastric emptying to extend the sensation of fullness.  

As a result, the average user can lose as much as 10.9% of body weight over a six-month period – which, considering the obesity epidemic in the western world, is an absolute gamechanger. There is one drawback however, and that’s the fact that patients aren’t just losing fat. They’re losing muscle mass too.  

According to the University of Liverpool, up to 1/3 of medically induced weight loss consists of muscle mass and sometimes even bone. This can have a detrimental effect on a person’s health, from lowering metabolic rate and blood sugar control, to increasing the risk of bone fractures and breaks. 

Evidently, current anti-obesity medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro are far from the perfect cure. And that’s without considering the potential long-term side effects that have yet to be discovered. 

Harbour BioMed’s obesity mission 

Harbour BioMed is a biopharmaceutical company that’s committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel antibody therapeutics, with a focus on oncology and immunology.  

In March this year, they announced the launch of Élancé Therapeutics, a program that aims to improve existing obesity treatments on the market. They specifically are searching for a way to ‘increase overall body weight loss and fat mass loss but preserve and even increase muscle and lean mass’.  

They plan on harnessing their own HCAb-based bispecific antibody technology to overcome the key challenges in anti-obesity medications, including ‘muscle preservation and long-term efficacy’. Alongside this, they’ll use Nona Biosciences’ Hu-mAtrIxTM AI platform to support their discovery.  

Élancé has a pipeline with multiple bispecific antibody programs in pre-clinical development stages, all with an aim of targeting hormone modulation and improving metabolic regulation.  

With this approach, they’re hoping to redefine the obesity treatment landscape and massively improve patient outcomes.  

Other drugmakers aiming for muscle preservation 

Unsurprisingly, Harbour BioMed are not the first company attempting to develop weight loss meds that preserve lean muscle. In fact, there are currently twelve others trying their hand. 

Those that are furthest along in development include Eli Lilly, Regeneron, Scholar Rock and Veru Pharma.  

According to Reuters, ‘Veru was first with results in January from a 168-person trial, showing its enobosarm helped older patients lose 71% less muscle when taken with Wegovy. Data on Lilly's muscle mass-preserving drug, bimagrumab, is due this year’. 

By helping patients preserve their muscle mass, they’re more likely to keep the weight off in the long term due to having a higher metabolism. Older patients will also be at a reduced risk of falls and fractures.  

Seeing a shift of focus from general weight loss to fat loss is a massively positive sign. However, some have argued that the FDA may be less likely to approve a drug purely on the way it affects muscle.  

According to one analyst, ‘the FDA does not approve drugs on the basis of muscle building or muscle preservation in the obesity setting’. A drug would need to show other benefits such as reduced side effects or better heart health, as an example.  

Final takeaways  

Although anti-obesity drugs have transformed the way we treat obesity and have improved the health outcomes of thousands of patients, they are far from perfect. Weight loss that includes large quantities of muscle is not a desirable outcome and can have damaging consequences.  

It’s fascinating to witness how many drugmakers are working to develop a solution where patients can successfully lose fat while keeping hold of all important muscle mass. And with the size of the market and the rewards at stake, it may not be long before this problem is answered. 

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