Amgen aims to become the industry’s top player in cardiometabolic risk reduction by the beginning of the next decade, and last weekend the company attended the American Diabetes Association’s 2026 Scientific Sessions in New Orleans with multiple goals in mind.
In one example, the company disclosed data aimed at strengthening the evidence supporting Repatha, a blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug in high-risk patient subgroups, while executives also sought to stake a claim for Amgen’s obesity and diabetes pipeline asset, Maritide, against the existing hormone receptor agonist category.
A highlight of the California drugmaker’s exhibit at this year’s ADA was new data from the company’s Phase 3 Vesalius-CV study, specifically findings in a subgroup of about 6,000 patients with high-risk diabetes and elevated LDL-C (also known as “bad” cholesterol) who had not experienced a heart attack or stroke.
Subgroup results showed that patients who received Repatha in addition to a statin or other LDL-C-lowering therapy had a 29% lower risk of coronary heart disease death, myocardial infarction, or ischemic stroke compared with placebo.
In addition, Repatha reduced the risk of a second composite primary endpoint, including ischemia-induced revascularization, by 21%.
Looking at the study, “the results are clear,” Paul Barton, MD, Amgen’s chief medical officer, told Fiers in an interview prior to his presentation at the company’s ADA Scientific Sessions.
“(E)previous intensive lipid-lowering therapy with Repatha in these high-risk diabetic patients significantly protected patients, although there were no cardiovascular events,” he explained.
These results were further reinforced by another presentation on Amgen’s Vesalius-Real global study. The study enrolled 350,000 patients from 11 countries with the same characteristics described above.
According to Burton, these results help highlight a “big problem”: “The vast majority of patients who need LDL-C lowering are untreated or undertreated, and without that enhanced lipid-lowering therapy, they won’t have the kind of protection we’re able to show with Repatha in Vesalius CV.”
Amgen has submitted a “complete data package” for Vesalius-CV to regulatory authorities in the U.S. and abroad, and Burton said the company expects it to be approved “soon” for patients with diabetes.
Repatha first won approval more than a decade ago to treat a genetic disorder that causes dangerously high LDL-C, but has since won approval to reduce heart risk in a variety of patients, including those without a prior diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.
“For all intents and purposes, Repatha can be used in these patients,” Burton said in reference to the high-risk diabetic patient subgroup announced in the ADA. Nevertheless, the CMO said the company wants to ensure that high-risk diabetic patients are formally included on Repatha’s label.
MariTide’s journey continues
Although Amgen did not release any new data on its antibody-peptide conjugate maritide (malidevert caffaglutide) during last weekend’s ADA, Susan Sweeney, Amgen’s vice president of obesity and related conditions, said in an interview with Fierce on the sidelines of the 2026 Scientific Sessions that the company remains “very excited about where we are” with respect to obesity and type 2 diabetes assets.
Adherence issues with leading GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide are well-documented, and Sweeney argued that Maritide offers a “completely different approach” regarding Amgen’s efforts to improve tolerability and because the drug is designed to be dosed much less frequently than current weekly GLP-1 injections and daily oral options.
Amgen is testing the drug at monthly dosing intervals, and even less frequent dosing could allow patients to take the drug every two months or even quarterly, which could be significantly more convenient than treatments currently approved in the field.
And as previously disclosed, Sweeney explained that Amgen is seeking to quell the gastrointestinal side effects reported in Maritide’s mid-term trial by utilizing a three-step dose escalation process over eight weeks.
Amgen’s Phase 3 marine program is investigating the effects of MariTide over 72 weeks in both obese and obese patients without type 2 diabetes, comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease, heart failure, and sleep apnea, and patients with type 2 diabetes alone. This broad-based program demonstrates drug developers’ increasing efforts to leverage chronic weight management assets to holistically address metabolic health.
As for how Maritide fits into the current diabetes and obesity landscape, “We think we have a very unique product offering for patients in the market who not only need to start treatment, but also need to continue treatment,” Sweeney said, linking that potential to the appeal of Maritide’s less frequent dosing.
The issue of adherence is also at the center of several other Amgen abstracts released over the weekend, which examine persistence and adherence to GLP-1-based therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes in the United States, as well as the impact of GLP-1 discontinuation on weight loss and glycemic goals in the same population.
In a persistence and adherence analysis of 28 studies involving 267,542 patients, Amgen found that 69% of people with type 2 diabetes were consistently taking GLP-1 at six months, but that number dropped to 49% over the course of one year.
“I think when you boil this down to it, you find that currently available GLP-1 therapies do not promote strong patient compliance, adherence, or perseverance, with at least half of patients discontinuing treatment within a year,” Barton explained.
Additionally, “failure to continue treatment will result in loss of diabetes control,” Burton added.
“We’re not seeing the reduction in HbA1c that we’re seeing in clinical trials or what we’ve seen with Maritide,” he continued, referring to Amgen’s Maritide Phase 3 program. “We’re also not seeing the controlled weight loss that we’re seeing in clinical trials, so there’s a huge unmet need here.”
With Repatha, MariTide, and the company’s investigational siRNA drug olpasilan, Amgen’s ambition is “to be the world leader in cardiometabolic risk management by 2030,” Burton added.
“We believe we have a truly important medicine that can address an unmet medical need, which is why we are confident we can realize that ambition by 2030,” he said.
