Novo Nordisk heart drug disappoints in key trial

Therapy acquired in $1bn-plus deal fails to beat placebo, raising questions over pipeline

Novo Nordisk [NVO] suffered a setback to its drug pipeline on Tuesday after a treatment at the centre of a major acquisition produced disappointing results in a clinical trial for heart failure patients.

The drug, CDR132L — also known as NN6706 — was tested against a placebo in 280 patients who had recently suffered a heart attack and were in heart failure. Results presented at a cardiology conference in Barcelona showed that patients taking the drug did not improve meaningfully more than those who received no active treatment.

The trial measured how much the heart's main pumping chamber shrank and remodelled after a heart attack, a sign of recovery. Patients on the lower dose saw an 8.4 per cent improvement over six months; those on the higher dose achieved 9.8 per cent. But the placebo group also improved by 7.6 per cent — close enough that researchers could not conclude the drug was making a real difference.

CDR132L works by blocking a small piece of genetic material called microRNA-132, which drives harmful changes to heart structure after injury. The drug is designed to tackle several of these damaging processes at once, including scarring of heart tissue and abnormal muscle growth.

Novo Nordisk acquired the drug's developer, German biotech Cardior, in 2024 for more than $1bn. The deal was funded partly by the enormous profits flowing from its blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, and was intended to give the company a stronger foothold in heart disease — a field closely linked to obesity and metabolic health.

The failure will disappoint investors hoping the acquisition could grow into a significant new revenue stream, at a time when Novo Nordisk already faces intensifying competition in the obesity drug market.

Johann Bauersachs, a heart specialist at Hannover Medical School who led the trial, noted it was the first time a microRNA-blocking drug had been tested in a randomised heart failure study. He said there were no safety concerns, but acknowledged the drug had not cleared the bar needed to demonstrate effectiveness. Researchers said they would continue to investigate whether a specific subgroup of patients — those with an enlarged and thickened heart muscle — might still benefit.

Novo Nordisk is pressing ahead with two further trials of the drug in related but distinct types of heart failure, both due to report results next year. Those readouts will be closely watched, given the difficulty of developing new treatments in this area. Heart failure trials have a long history of promising early results that fail to hold up in larger, more rigorous studies.