In ancient Greek mythology, the gods possessed the ability to be immortal and ageless, which is said to be due to their diet being different from that of mortals.
A popular story tells that in his youth, Zeus survived on the food that flowed from the horns of a divine goat. This divine goat had one horn that flowed with ambrosia—the food of the gods—and another horn that flowed with nectar—the drink of the gods.
In many mythological tales, ambrosia is seen as a symbol of “immortality.” A well-known story related to this is about the war god Achilles. Achilles was the son of the mortal Peleus and the goddess Thetis. In an attempt to give Achilles the same immortal abilities as the other gods, his mother anointed him with the divine ambrosia. However, this act was opposed by Achilles’ father, Peleus. Due to his father’s interference, Achilles’ heel was not anointed with the sacred ambrosia, and it became his only vulnerability. During the Trojan War, this warrior with an invincible body was ultimately killed by an arrow shot to his heel.
The reason for mentioning ambrosia here is that on August 20, 2024, a biotechnology company named Ambrosia Biosciences successfully raised $16 million in funding. Another point of interest is that in an interview, the founder of Ambrosia, Nick Traggis, revealed that about 15 employees of the company used to work at Array Biopharma, which was acquired by Pfizer with a large sum of money, these employees were “optimized” later on.
Currently, this newly established company, which has only been around for a few months, has stated that its research and development goal is the weight loss drug market, which has become a fiercely competitive “red ocean.”
Ambrosia: Former Pfizer Employees, Come Join Us!
On April 22nd of this year, foreign media reported that Pfizer had discontinued its research site in Boulder, central northern Colorado, USA.
The founder of Ambrosia, Nick Traggis, stated that, being part of the same community, rumors about Pfizer’s potential layoffs had already been circulating before the news was officially disclosed. Therefore, the company was established in March of this year and conducted a seed round of financing.
Traggis said that after receiving the news, he had extended an olive branch to Pfizer employees who might soon be out of work. “It may not happen, but if it does, Ambrosia is ready and hopes to bring this team that is about to be disbanded back together.”
Pfizer’s research site in Boulder is closely related to its acquisition of Array Biopharma in 2019.
On June 17, 2019, Pfizer acquired Array for $11.4 billion. Since then, Array’s research and development team in Boulder joined Pfizer’s R&D department. The site played a role in the development of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, thus attracting a lot of attention.
Later, as everyone knows, after the pandemic stabilized, the revenue from the COVID-19 product manufacturers, including Pfizer, for their COVID-19 business segments shrank significantly. According to Pfizer’s financial report for the first half of 2024, Pfizer’s total revenue for the first half of the year was $28.162 billion, a decrease of 11% year-on-year, and the net profit was $3.156 billion, a decrease of 60% year-on-year, mainly affected by the COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and the COVID-19 oral drug Paxlovid.
Due to the decline in performance, the company began large-scale layoffs and factory closures in 2023. Obviously, its Boulder research site was not spared from this round of extensive optimization.
Ambrosia: Heading Towards Oral Small Molecule Weight Loss Drugs
Before being acquired by Pfizer, Array was focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing targeted small molecule drugs.
In June 2018, the FDA approved the marketing of Braftovi® (encorafenib) capsules, developed by Array, in combination with Mektovi® (binimetinib) for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma with a BRAF mutation. In addition to this indication, this combination therapy can also be expanded to multiple solid tumor indications, including metastatic colorectal cancer with BRAF mutations.
“Strong small molecule drug discovery capabilities” is one of the reasons why Pfizer was willing to acquire Array at a high price of $11.4 billion, and also the reason why Ambrosia is actively recruiting these former Pfizer employees.
Currently, there is no more detailed information disclosed about Ambrosia’s specific business and R&D pipeline. However, according to the founder’s revealed information, the company will apply the professional knowledge that has flowed out from Array to obesity, and will first discover and develop new oral small molecule therapies targeting GLP-1 and GPCR, among others.
The “profit-making” ability of weight loss drugs is already evident. Leaders in this field such as Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and other participants are all focusing on developing weight loss drugs that are more effective, have higher patient compliance, and are safer.
Ambrosia also stated that replicating existing weight loss drug molecules is not the focus of this company, and there will be “something new.”
How to become a leader in the field?
In May of this year, analysts from many institutions once again raised their estimates for the global weight loss drug market share, predicting an increase from $100 billion to $150 billion or even more by 2033. Considering the current global obesity rate, the increasing demand for weight loss is indeed reasonable, and the weight loss drug market is understandably optimistic.
The current state of the weight loss market is: there is a high demand for good products. Since 2023, many new players have joined the weight loss drug research and development field, some focusing on original innovation and others on imitation. Of course, there are also some other voices, such as Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan, who once stated that Novartis is not interested in “following the trend” with obesity-related candidate drugs.
However, many pharmaceutical companies obviously do not want to miss this rare opportunity. For example, Pfizer, which has been mentioned repeatedly in the previous text, announced its plan to continue advancing the oral small molecule GLP-1 analog danuglipron a month ago. It is reported that Pfizer has determined a once-daily modified release formulation and plans to start dose optimization studies for danuglipron in the second half of 2024.
For today’s weight loss drug research and development, to have a place, it is necessary to find a differentiated target, or pay attention to various factors such as product side effects, helping to maintain muscle mass, and the user experience of patients.
Ambrosia, like Pfizer, is optimistic about the direction of oral small molecules, but whether it can surpass the front runners is something that still needs more time to verify.
【Editor’s note】The above content (~5975 words) is a quick translation of a Chinese article by DrugTimes team. To read the original article, please click here. All comments are warmly welcome. Many thanks!
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