• Altimmune and Viking Therapeutics have promising obesity drugs and could be great acquisition targets for Pfizer.
• Pfizer should be able to easily fund an acquisition of either small drugmaker.
• However, Pfizer could hold off on the acquisitions front to see how its obesity drug PF-07976016 fares in clinical testing.

Altimmune said on Thursday that it plans to test its lead experimental obesity drug, pemvidutide, to potentially treat alcohol use disorder and alcohol-associated liver disease.

The market for weight-loss treatments is expected to see 16 new drugs vying for a slice of the lucrative business currently dominated by Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO), opens new tab and Eli Lilly (LLY.N), opens new tab, according to estimates from analysts at Morningstar and Pitchbook.

• Altimmune's anti-obesity therapy has a key feature that Wegovy doesn't.
• That means it could one day steal market share.
• Altimmune also has enough resources to clarify whether its candidate is a winner.

Altimmune’s investigational obesity treatment pemvidutide preserved lean muscle mass while inducing weight loss in adults with obesity, with the majority of the drop in body weight from fat, according to a data readout of the Phase II MOMENTUM study unveiled on Sunday.

When Madrigal Pharmaceuticals’ Rezdiffra was approved last month as the first-ever treatment for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, experts hailed the drug as an “important first.” However, the consensus among experts is that Rezdiffra is just the beginning for a disease that has been notoriously difficult to treat.

Altimmune has been beaten by hepatitis B. The drug candidate, which the company was preparing for partnering, failed to meet the bar for further development in a phase 2 study, prompting the biotech to stop development and focus on its GLP-1/glucagon dual receptor agonist. 

Maryland-based Altimmune on Thursday reported topline data from the Phase II MOMENTUM trial, showing that its investigational GLP-1/glucagon dual receptor agonist pemvidutide induced strong weight loss in adults with overweight or obesity.

Altimmune has completed dosing the last subject in its Phase II MOMENTUM clinical trial of pemvidutide to treat obesity or overweight.

The placebo-controlled, randomised, multi-centre study is being carried out at nearly 30 sites in the US.