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.<\/strong><\/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":590736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[14692,5189,51,3085,102752,105,20944,4348,5489,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-590735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-biogen-inc","9":"tag-breaking-news-europe","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-business-news","12":"tag-eli-lilly-and-co","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-health-care-industry","15":"tag-healthcare","16":"tag-pharmaceuticals","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115604658876300273","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}