Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Colin Nigel Bristow - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Analyst : Congrats on the quarter. Not surprisingly, we've been getting an increasing number of questions on your obesity assets. And I was wondering if you could just talk to your strategy and level of enthusiasm here, and maybe frame out some of the time lines, you've got the GRP75, the leptin receptor antagonist. I think you shared some pretty provocative data at ADA on the myostatin blocker and the activin A blocker. Maybe you could just tell us your lever enthusiasm. Is this something that you're going to go full force and plan to have a major presence in down the road? Just some color there would be helpful. George D. Yancopoulos - Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. - Co-Founder, President, Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Chairman Yes. As you said, we're very excited about, I guess, 2 of the approaches that we've been taking in obesity. One is our unique collection of targets that we've either been the first to discover, like the GPR75, genetically identified target that came from our Regeneron Genetics Center, which is a very exciting new target for obesity, as well as our new approaches such as our leptin receptor agonistic antibody. But one thing we're doing is moving those programs forward and understanding exactly what their potential is in the field of obesity. But as you said, right now, the field, which is dominated by the GLP-1 agonists, also is recognizing increasing problems with this type of weight loss, meaning that about 40% of the weight loss is due to muscle loss. That means if you lose 20 pounds, 8 pounds of that approximately, on average, will be muscle. Most patients will never get that muscle back. This can, over time, especially if patients go off these drugs and regain the weight as fat, can create potentially a very large public health problem in dilemma. So we also have been, as you pointed out, very active in the field of muscle preservation and muscle growth agents. We've developed some of, I think, some of the most exciting candidates in the field that have the ability to do this. And we are certainly considering how to study these muscle preservation and muscle growth agents in combination with existing weight loss agents to see whether we can maintain or even grow muscle in the setting of weight loss. Hopefully, perhaps increasing the quality of the weight loss, maybe even resulting in greater weight loss. But most importantly, making sure that the patients in terms of their muscle and so forth, do a lot better. And we will be talking about our clinical trials in this area, we hope, very shortly.