KEY DETAILS
An early-stage trial is testing whether a GLP-1 is safe alongside chemotherapy for metastatic pancreatic, colorectal and liver cancer, because no data exists yet.
Amgen is recruiting 250 adults with obstructive sleep apnea and obesity for a 52-week Phase 3 trial of maritide.
The LIVERAGE Phase 3 trial is enrolling people who have MASH liver disease with cirrhosis to test survodutide, which is not approved anywhere.
Another trial will test tirzepatide in people who did not lose enough weight after bariatric surgery.
Four clinical trials opened this week that test GLP-1 medications in conditions most people would not associate with them. None of them changes what you can be prescribed today, and all four are worth knowing about, because trials are how a drug earns a new use and a new reason for an insurer to cover it.
The first is an early-stage trial at the University of Arizona testing whether a GLP-1 medication is safe to take alongside standard chemotherapy in people with metastatic pancreatic, colorectal or liver cancer. The reason it exists is that this is already happening without evidence: a growing number of people being treated for gastrointestinal cancers are also on a GLP-1, and the researchers state plainly that no trial data yet establishes whether that combination is safe. This is the first attempt to answer the question rather than assume it.
Amgen has begun recruiting 250 adults for a Phase 3 trial of maridebart cafraglutide, the drug it calls maritide, in people who have obstructive sleep apnea and are already using a positive airway pressure machine. The trial runs 52 weeks. Sleep apnea is the use that opened Medicare and private coverage to tirzepatide, so a second drug with a sleep apnea indication would matter well beyond the people in the study.
A large Phase 3 trial called LIVERAGE is now enrolling people who have both MASH liver disease and cirrhosis, testing survodutide, a drug in the same family that is not approved anywhere yet. Liver disease is the area where these medications have the strongest case for being treatment rather than weight loss, and cirrhosis patients are usually the last group a trial will accept, so their inclusion here is the notable part.
The fourth trial is for people who had weight loss surgery and did not lose as much as expected, testing whether tirzepatide helps. That is a common and rarely discussed situation, and people in it are often told there is nothing left to try.
None of these drugs are available for these uses now, and two of them are not approved at all. What these four have in common is that they are testing GLP-1 medications as treatment for a named condition rather than as weight loss, and that is the route by which coverage usually arrives. If you have one of these conditions, the trial records are public and open to read, and a trial you qualify for is worth raising with your own prescriber.
Sources
ClinicalTrials.gov: GLP-1 RA plus standard of care in first-line metastatic pancreatic, colorectal or hepatocellular cancer
ClinicalTrials.gov: Maridebart cafraglutide versus placebo in adults with obstructive sleep apnea on PAP therapy
ClinicalTrials.gov: LIVERAGE Cirrhosis: survodutide in NASH/MASH with cirrhosis
ClinicalTrials.gov: Tirzepatide for weight management after suboptimal weight loss following bariatric surgery
Originally published on GLP1Laws.
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