New Weight Loss Drugs

New weight loss treatments are being developed, and these medications may go to market later this year or in 2026. Let’s take a look at these medications, and see how they stack up in terms of efficacy, safety, and cost as compared to existing weight management medications and other methods of weight loss.

Most importantly, we’ll answer the question on many of our readers’ minds: if I suffer from obesity, will these new drugs give me my best chance to lose weight, keep it off, and get my life back?

What Are the Latest Weight Loss Drugs?

Three new weight management drugs are currently getting a lot of buzz. These are Orforglipron, Amycretin, and CagriSema.

Orforglipron

Orforglipron is a GLP-1 receptor agonist similar to Ozempic or Wegovy, but unlike previous weight management medications, Orforglipron can be taken orally. It’s a once-daily pill that can be taken with or without food and water (in contrast to some previous medications). The main benefit is that, because it’s in pill form rather than requiring a subcutaneous injection, it could be a lot less hassle for patients to take than existing medications.

Amycretin

Amycretin is a new medication that functions in two ways. First, it acts as a GLP-1 receptor agonist, which means that it mimics the production of the hormone GLP-1 just like Ozempic and similar medications do. It also mimics the production of amylin. Both of these hormones are associated with satiety and with slowing gastric emptying, meaning that Amycretin works by making you feel full for longer. Amycretin is being tested as both an oral medication and as an injection.

CagriSema

CagriSema is a new medication that combines cagrilintide and Semaglutide (hence the name), both of which function to reduce patients’ hunger and make them feel full for longer. In clinical trials, it led to the highest weight loss of any of these three new medications.

How Effective Are These New Weight Loss Drugs?

These drugs are currently making their way through testing, so results may change; but preliminary results indicate that these drugs work little better than existing weight management medications like Wegovy or Zepbound to help patients to lose weight and keep it off.

In one study, patients who suffered from obesity and who took Orforglipron lost about 12.4% (which is similar to lower dose Ozempic) more of their total body weight than the placebo group over the course of a 9-month trial. Weight loss was also inconsistent; only 46-75% of patients experienced at least 10% body weight loss. The study was short (only 36 weeks), and weight loss actually hadn’t plateaued by the end of the study, meaning that it’s possible that patients would continue to lose weight after 36 weeks. Nonetheless, these results are relatively modest.

Weight loss is lower among patients who suffer from type 2 diabetes (this is true of GLP-1 agonist receptor drugs generally). The above study was conducted on patients who suffered from obesity or overweight, but who didn’t suffer from diabetes. But in the ACHIEVE-1 study, diabetic patients who took the highest dose of Orforglipron lost an average of just 6.3% of their total body weight more than the placebo group. That translates to just 13 pounds.

A lot of news articles are talking about the weight loss potential of Amycretin. In the phase 1b/2a trial, the highest dose of subcutaneous Amycretin led to patients losing on average 22% of their total body weight in 9 months (which is similar to the highest dose of Zepbound which is also a combination GLP-1 agonist). That number might look very high. However, there is cause for caution when interpreting this number. For one thing, in this study the placebo group actually gained weight. That’s very unusual, and it’s a red flag that the study might have had methodological errors. Second, Novo Nordisk (the company that produces Amycretin) only released weight loss numbers for the trial volunteers who completed treatment, which researcher Andy Hsieh warns could “inflate treatment effect in the real-world setting.” Or to put it another way: this 22% number sounds great, but may be the result of cherry-picking and might not reflect the experience of the average patient.

CagriSema seems to offer a slight advantage in terms of weight loss compared to the other new medications, though results are preliminary. In the REDEFINE-1 trial, which screened out patients who suffered from diabetes, patients lost an average of 22.7% over 68 weeks (17 months). That’s substantially more than patients in the same trial who took semaglutide, cagrilintide, or a placebo. In the REDEFINE-2 trial, which looked at patients who did suffer from type 2 diabetes, weight loss was much more modest. Patients lost just 12.6% of their body weight more than the placebo group on average.

Ultimately, all of these medications offer weight loss that is on par with, or a slight improvement on, that offered by existing drugs such as Ozempic and Zepbound.

Are These New Weight Loss Drugs Safe?

Many people who suffer from obesity haven’t taken weight management medications because they’re worried about the side effects. Are these new medications any safer?

That’s hard to say, because the unfortunate truth is that safety information on these new medications is still very preliminary. For example, Novo hasn’t released the detailed data on side effects of Amycretin from their phase 1b/2a study. Instead they just report that “The safety profile of amycretin was consistent with incretin-based therapies.” This is not a lot of information for prospective patients to go on and doesn’t really say anything about the safety of this medication.

These drugs also haven’t even hit the market yet, let alone been on the market for a few years; which means that severe and long-term side effects may not yet be visible. For example, current second-generation weight management medications are linked to an increased risk of gastroparesis (stomach paralysis), pancreatitis, cancer, and other serious issues. While it’s assumed that the oral medications may care the same risks, it’s impossible to know for sure what their short-term or long-term side effect profile will look like. One important thing to keep in mind, was that another oral GLP-1 medication Rybelsus (semaglutide) which was released a few years ago failed to achieve the same level of weight loss as the injectable versions and was also very poorly tolerated by many people due to extreme nausea and vomiting. Whether these new medications will suffer from these same drawbacks in clinical practice remains to be seen.

Where information is known, it suggests that these new medications carry roughly the same risk of mild to moderate side effects as existing second-generation weight management medications. For instance, the ACHIEVE-1 study found that the most common side effects associated with Orforglipron were: diarrhea (19-26% of patients, depending on dosage), dyspepsia (10-20% of patients), nausea (13-18%), constipation (8-17%) and vomiting (5-14%). The same study found that 4-8% of patients had to discontinue Orforglipron due to the severity of side effects. These side effects are very similar to those caused by second-generation weight management drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which makes sense because these new drugs are also GLP-1 agonists.

(If you want more detailed information on the side effects of existing weight management medications, take a look at our page on Ozemic side effects).

How Much Do These New Weight Loss Drugs Cost?

Many patients who suffer from obesity haven’t sought out Ozempic or similar medications because they’re worried about the cost. A lot of these folks are eagerly watching for news about new weight management drugs, in the hopes that these new medications will be more affordable.

This is possible, but unfortunately it’s not very likely. None of these new drugs are on the market yet, which means that we can’t know for sure how much they will cost; but market analysts predict that they’ll have a similar cost as previous medications. That could mean they cost around $500-$1,300/month, or about $6,000 to $15,000 per year (depending on the dosage and delivery mechanism).

(Some people have historically tried to get around the high cost of existing weight management medications by going through compounding pharmacies, but the FDA no longer allows that due in part to safety concerns. For more on this topic, take a look at our blog “FDA Puts a Halt to Compounded Versions of Weight Loss Drugs“).

Many insurance plans don’t cover existing weight management drugs, and unfortunately there’s little reason to expect that to change. Many employers worry that patients will use these medications for cosmetic purposes, while others balk at the cost of the medications.

Is There A Better Way to Lose Weight?

If you are suffering from obesity and you want your best chance to lose weight, keep it off, and get your life back, then the unfortunate truth is that weight loss medications may not represent your best chance. They are expensive and come with frequent side effects (including some that can be severe and even life-threatening), and if you suffer from obesity, then even losing 22% of your total body weight is unlikely to get you back down to your ideal weight.

However, there is a better approach. Because we care about you and your health, if you need to lose more than 20% of your weight or just want a more effective long-term solution for obesity than medications, we highly recommend that you consider bariatric surgery which still remains the gold standard for optimizing weight loss and metabolic health.

Bariatric surgery is extremely effective. A recent study found that bariatric surgery is at least 5 times more effective than the best weight loss medications at producing long-lasting weight loss. Many of our patients lose 70-95% of their excess body weight and keep it off. That could mean losing 100-150 pounds or even more, for good, and after only a single treatment. Imagine how that would feel.

Bariatric surgery is also very safe. At a certified ASMBS comprehensive MBSAQIP center like the BMCC, bariatric surgery is as safe as any minor outpatient procedure such as gallbladder surgery. In fact, for many of our patients surgery is an outpatient procedure, and they go home the same day as their surgery.

Finally, bariatric surgery can be a lot more affordable than weight management medications. For one thing, most insurance plans cover bariatric surgery. Why? Because insurers realize that they’ll save a lot of money down the line by helping you to lose weight now, since bariatric surgery can also alleviate many comorbidities such as sleep apnea, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. 

Even if you pay for bariatric surgery out of pocket, the cost is often a lot less than what you would pay for prescription weight loss medications. These medications cost $6,000-$15,000 per year; and because the weight often starts coming back as soon as patients stop taking them, patients have to pay this cost year after year for as long as they want to keep the weight off. Some patients may find this doable, but for others it is cost-prohibitive.

By contrast, at the BMCC our cash pay prices range from $12,250 to just over $20,000. Unlike weight management medications, this represents a one-time cost that can lead to lifelong benefits.

Many of our patients say that the decision to undergo bariatric surgery was one of the best decisions they ever made.

“I can only thank Dr. Long and his staff for giving me my life back. I have set some new goals for myself and look forward to walking a 5k and participating in a triathlon.”—Johnetta Hebrlee, duodenal switch patient.

At the BMCC, we are now accepting patients from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. If you’re suffering, don’t wait. Contact our Denver office today.