New ICON Survey Highlights Importance of Combination Therapies in Future Obesity Treatment

ICON plc, (NASDAQ: ICLR) a world-leading clinical research organisation powered by healthcare intelligence, today announced results from a recent industry survey of over 100 professionals engaged in obesity-related clinical research to measure industry opinions on trends within this therapeutic area. The majority of respondents believe the future of obesity therapies lies in trials that are designed to measure more than one outcome. There is much overlap between obesity and co-morbidities such as diabetes, steatosis (fatty liver), and cardiovascular disease, and in line with this, most respondents (64%) felt combination therapies would be the primary focus of future research. Furthermore, half of respondents are employing multi-indication studies in their current obesity-related clinical studies.

Obesity is a growing health concern worldwide, with at least 2.8 million people dying each year because of the disease¹. Two-thirds (66%) of respondents were confident in their obesity-related pipeline success prospects in the current market. They did, however, highlight challenges in obesity-related clinical studies around the current lack of long-term follow-up studies (44%), lack of appropriate obesity-specific trial design (39%), and difficulty in diverse patient recruitment (38%).

Simon Bruce, VP of Internal Medicine at ICON commented, “The focus on combination therapies cited by respondents is, in our view, indicative of the potential to make significant advancements in obesity clinical research in the coming years. There is more to examine on the implications of obesity as a risk factor across the disease spectrum and how it may impact treatment, drug development and clinical trials for obesity. We are seeing a growing interest in the simultaneous development of assets. This is something we are actively exploring at ICON in order to improve efficiencies, and to support more treatments to better meet the needs of the current population.”

Sponsors must also invest in long-term studies in obesity to determine the lasting impact of effective treatments. This clinical data will help in terms of commercialising an obesity treatment and will benefit patients through the tracking of safety data for a longer period, in addition to demonstrating the impact of obesity drugs on longer-term co-morbidities such as heart disease or diabetes. Because obesity is so closely connected with such health events, treating obesity may reduce their occurrence — and long-term data is important in determining a treatment’s impact on them.