The Novo Nordisk A\/S headquarters in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. <\/p>\n
Nichlas Pollier | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Shares of Novo Nordisk on Monday fell to a four-year low after the Danish drug pharmaceutical company said a highly-anticipated trial for Alzheimer’s disease failed to meet its main goal.<\/p>\n
The trial tested whether semaglutide\u00a0\u2014 the active ingredient in Novo’s blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy \u2014 helped slow progression for Alzheimer’s disease. <\/p>\n
While treatment with semaglutide resulted in improvement of Alzheimer’s disease-related biomarkers in two separate trials, this did not translate into a delay of disease progression, Novo said in a statement Monday. The goal had been to slow patient’s cognitive decline by at least 20%.<\/p>\n
Novo stock was down 8.3% to 279 Danish kroner as of 12:15 a.m. GMT (7:15 a.m. ET), it’s lowest level since July 2021. Shares of Eli Lilly<\/a> also fell about 1% while Biogen<\/a> stock rose 5% in premarket trade.<\/p>\n Analysts had prior to the results called the trials a long shot, whereas Novo itself had referred it as a “lottery ticket.”<\/p>\n “Based on the significant unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease 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 Novo’s Chief Scientific Officer Martin Holst Lange.<\/p>\n Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is notoriously difficult to treat. It is also expected to affect an increasing proportion of people worldwide as populations grow older. <\/p>\n Current treatments such as Eli Lilly’s Kisunla and Biogen\/Eisai’s Leqembi have shown to slow down the progression of the disease by up to a third, but come with the risk of severe side-effects.<\/p>\n This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Novo Nordisk A\/S headquarters in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. Nichlas Pollier | Bloomberg |…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[20863,271,84,273,19330,102,13215,2960,13214,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-280575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-biogen-inc","tag-breaking-news-europe","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-eli-lilly-and-co","tag-health","tag-health-care-industry","tag-healthcare","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}