Cagrilintide vs Eloralintide 2026: Amylin Data

Cagrilintide vs Eloralintide 2026: Amylin Data. Cagrilintide vs eloralintide compared: selective vs dual amylin/calcitonin activity, phase 2 and phase 3 trial data, tolerability, and development stage. Key Takeaways Both are amylin receptor agonists, which makes this a rare like-for-like comparison: most obesity peptide matchups pit different mechanisms against each other. This one compares two versions of the same idea. The mechanistic split is selectivity: eloralintide is a selective amylin receptor agonist, while cagrilintide activates both amylin and calcitonin receptors (a DACRA). Neither is FDA-approved: cagrilintide monotherapy and eloralintide are both investigational as of August 2026. The trial timepoints are not the same: eloralintide's phase 2 ran 48 weeks; cagrilintide's phase 2 ran 26 weeks and its phase 3 monotherapy arm ran 68 weeks. Percentages are not directly stackable. Cagrilintide is further along: it has phase 3 monotherapy data, a dedicated phase 3 programme, and it is the amylin half of CagriSema, which Novo Nordisk filed with the FDA in December 2025. No head-to-head trial exists: every cagrilintide vs eloralintide number below comes from separate trials with different designs, populations, and durations. Cagrilintide vs eloralintide is the first genuinely like-for-like comparison in the next-generation obesity peptide field. Almost every other matchup — CagriSema vs retatrutide, tirzepatide vs semaglutide — sets one mechanism against a different one. Here, both compounds are once-weekly amylin receptor agonists built on the same biological premise: that amylin signalling can drive satiety through a pathway separate from GLP-1. The difference is in how cleanly each one hits that pathway. Novo Nordisk's cagrilintide is a non-selective, long-acting amylin analog that also engages the calcitonin receptor. Eli Lilly's eloralintide was engineered the other way — to activate the amylin receptor and largely leave calcitonin alone. This article compares mechanism, trial evidence, tolerability, development stage, and research-use status. For the wider pipeline picture around both, see our investigational peptide drugs for diabetes and obesity review. Quick Comparison Feature Cagrilintide Eloralintide Developer Novo Nordisk Eli Lilly Mechanism Long-acting amylin analog; dual amylin and calcitonin receptor agonist (DACRA) Selective long-acting amylin receptor agonist; minimal calcitonin receptor activity by design Dosing schedule Once weekly, subcutaneous Once weekly, subcutaneous Key monotherapy trial Phase 2 dose-finding, n=706; phase 3 REDEFINE 1 monotherapy arm, n=3,417 total Phase 2, n=263 Trial timepoint 26 weeks (phase 2); 68 weeks (phase 3) 48 weeks Reported weight reduction 10.8% at 4.5 mg vs 3.0% placebo (26 wk); 11.8% at 2.4 mg vs 2.3% placebo (68 wk) 9.5% to 20.1% across dose arms vs 0.4% placebo (48 wk) Tolerability signal Mostly gastrointestinal — nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation; mainly mild to moderate and temporary; 1.0% discontinued for nausea vs 0.1% on placebo Mild to moderate GI symptoms and fatigue; more frequent at higher doses; incidence similar to placebo in the 1–3 mg arms Development stage Dedicated phase 3 (RENEW) programme; also the amylin component of CagriSema, filed with the FDA 18 December 2025 Phase 3 enrolment planned from end of 2025 FDA status Not approved — investigational Not approved — investigational What Is Cagrilintide? Cagrilintide is Novo Nordisk's long-acting amylin analog, dosed once weekly by subcutaneous injection. Amylin is a hormone co-secreted with insulin from pancreatic beta cells; it slows gastric emptying, suppresses glucagon after meals, and signals satiety through the area postrema. Cagrilintide is a lipidated peptide designed to reproduce that signal with a half-life long enough for weekly dosing. The important pharmacological detail is that cagrilintide is not selective . It belongs to the class described in the literature as dual amylin and calcitonin receptor agonists, or DACRAs, meaning it activates the calcitonin receptor alongside amylin receptors. Whether that extra calcitonin activity helps or hurts is still an open research question — it is one of the reasons cagrilintide and eloralintide are worth comparing at all. For a fuller primer on the compound itself, see what cagrilintide peptide is used for . What Is Eloralintide? Eloralintide is Eli Lilly's investigational once-weekly amylin receptor agonist. Lilly's framing is explicit in the compound's name and its press materials: this is a selective amylin agonist. Phase 1 characterisation reported that eloralintide activates the human amylin 1 receptor roughly 12 times more potently than the human calcitonin receptor, so calcitonin engagement is minimal at clinical exposures. That selectivity is the entire design thesis. If the weight-loss benefit of amylin biology comes from the amylin receptor and the tolerability cost comes partly from off-target activity, then a cleaner molecule should — in theory — separate the two. Eloralintide's phase 2 programme was built to test whether that theory holds over a long enough window to matter. For how the same compound reads against a very different mechanism, see our eloralintide vs retatrutide breakdown. Mechanism: Selective vs Dual Receptor Activity The short answer: cagrilintide is a broader instrument, eloralintide is a narrower one, and neither approach has yet been proven superior in the same population. Cagrilintide's dual profile has a preclinical rationale. Calcitonin receptor activation has been studied for its own effects on food intake and glucose handling, and some researchers argue that a balanced amylin/calcitonin profile produces stronger or more durable metabolic effects than amylin alone. The counter-argument is that a second receptor pathway is a second source of variability — in effect, in tolerability, and in long-term safety questions. Eloralintide takes the opposite bet. By concentrating activity at the amylin receptor, Lilly is testing whether the satiety and weight effects survive the loss of calcitonin activity, and whether tolerability improves as a result. The phase 2 tolerability profile is the first meaningful data point on that question, and it looked favourable — but a single phase 2 study in 263 people is not a verdict. Trial Evidence: Cagrilintide Cagrilintide has the deeper evidence base, simply because it started earlier. The dose-finding phase 2 trial randomised 706 adults with obesity, or overweight plus at least one weight-related comorbidity, to once-weekly cagrilintide at 0.3, 0.6, 1.2, 2.4 or 4.5 mg, weekly placebo, or daily liraglutide 3.0 mg as an active comparator, all alongside lifestyle intervention. Over 26 weeks , mean weight reductions ran from 6.0% to 10.8% across the cagrilintide dose range, with the top 4.5 mg arm at 10.8% versus about 3.0% on placebo . The phase 3 data arrived later and from an unusual source: the REDEFINE 1 trial, which included a cagrilintide 2.4 mg monotherapy arm alongside CagriSema, semaglutide 2.4 mg and placebo across 3,417 adults with obesity or overweight and at least one comorbidity, without type 2 diabetes. At 68 weeks , cagrilintide monotherapy produced 11.8% mean weight reduction versus 2.3% on placebo — 12.5 kg against 2.5 kg. 31.6% of cagrilintide participants lost 15% or more of body weight, against 4.7% on placebo. Novo Nordisk presented these results at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes congress in September 2025 and used them to move cagrilintide into a dedicated phase 3 programme, RENEW. Trial Evidence: Eloralintide Eloralintide's headline dataset is a 48-week, multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial in 263 adults with obesity or overweight plus at least one obesity-related comorbidity, without type 2 diabetes. Participants were randomised across placebo, fixed doses of 1, 3, 6 and 9 mg, and two dose-escalation schemes. Every treatment arm met the primary endpoint. Mean weight reductions on the efficacy estimand ran from 9.5% at 1 mg to 20.1% at 9 mg , against 0.4% on placebo . The escalation arms landed at 19.9% (6/9 mg) and 16.4% (3/6/9 mg), and the 3 mg and 6 mg fixed arms came in at 12.4% and 17.6%. Lilly also reported improvements in waist circumference, blood pressure, lipids, glycemic control and inflammation markers. Results were presented at ObesityWeek 2025 and published simultaneously in The Lancet . You can read Lilly's full phase 2 announcement for the per-arm breakdown. Why the Percentages Are Not Directly Comparable The short answer: 20.1% over 48 weeks and 11.8% over 68 weeks are not measuring the same thing, and anyone presenting eloralintide as "roughly twice as effective" is comparing across trials that were never designed to be compared. Three differences matter most. Duration: cagrilintide's phase 2 ran 26 weeks, its phase 3 arm ran 68 weeks, and eloralintide's phase 2 ran 48 weeks. Weight-loss curves in this class typically have not plateaued at 26 weeks, so a 26-week number systematically understates a compound relative to a 48- or 68-week readout. Scale: 263 participants versus 3,417 produces very different confidence intervals around a mean. Analysis convention: the eloralintide figures cited above are efficacy-estimand results, which model outcomes as if participants stayed on treatment; treatment-regimen estimands, which count everyone regardless of adherence, usually read lower. Add differing placebo responses — 0.4% in the eloralintide trial versus 2.3% and 3.0% in the cagrilintide trials — and the placebo-adjusted deltas shift again. The honest framing is that both compounds produced clinically meaningful weight reduction as amylin monotherapy, and that eloralintide's top-dose arms produced the highest single number reported by either programme so far. That is a real signal. It is not a head-to-head result. The same caution applies to our CagriSema vs retatrutide comparison, and for the same reason. Tolerability: Where the Selectivity Thesis Gets Tested Amylin-class compounds share the gastrointestinal profile of the broader obesity peptide field — nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation — and both programmes reported those as the dominant adverse events. For cagrilintide monotherapy in REDEFINE 1, GI events were described as mainly temporary and mild to moderate, and discontinuation attributable to nausea was 1.0% against 0.1% on placebo. For eloralintide, GI symptoms and fatigue were the most common adverse events, mild to moderate, and clearly dose-dependent: they appeared more often in the higher-dose arms, occurred less often with slower escalation, and ran at rates similar to placebo in the 1 mg and 3 mg arms. That dose- and escalation-dependence is the most informative part of the eloralintide safety picture, because it suggests tolerability is a titration problem rather than a fixed property of the molecule. Development Stage: Cagrilintide Is Further Down the Road The short answer: cagrilintide is late-stage and commercially embedded; eloralintide is early-but-fast. Cagrilintide has phase 3 monotherapy data in hand, a dedicated phase 3 programme (RENEW) advancing from Q4 2025, and a second life as the amylin half of CagriSema , the fixed-dose cagrilintide 2.4 mg / semaglutide 2.4 mg combination. Novo Nordisk presented the phase 3 monotherapy results in September 2025 and submitted an NDA for CagriSema to the FDA on 18 December 2025, based on REDEFINE 1 and REDEFINE 2. That filing is for the combination, not for cagrilintide as a standalone product — cagrilintide monotherapy remains investigational either way. Eloralintide is at the phase 2-to-phase 3 transition. Lilly stated phase 3 enrolment was planned to begin by the end of 2025, with development paths covering eloralintide alone and in combination with tirzepatide for obesity and type 2 diabetes. That combination strategy is structurally similar to CagriSema's — an amylin agonist paired with an incretin backbone — which means the two companies may end up competing on combinations as much as on monotherapy. Researchers already tracking amylin-plus-incretin pairings can see how the topic is discussed in our cagrilintide with tirzepatide guide. Research-Use Status and Sourcing Neither compound is FDA-approved. Neither is available as a prescription therapy. What does exist is a research-chemical market where both are sold as lyophilised powder for laboratory use, and where the quality gap between suppliers is wider than the price gap. Cagrilintide is the more established of the two on that market, with multiple vendors carrying it and published third-party testing available from several. Peptide Partners lists research-grade cagrilintide with Janoshik Analytical COAs, and code KLIKOOGQWG takes 10% off through that tracked link — the current terms are documented on our cagrilintide coupon code page, and the full vendor board sits on our cagrilintide product page . Eloralintide is newer to the research market and carried by far fewer suppliers, which makes documentation the deciding factor rather than price. Peptide Plugs stocks it as Elora (eloralintide) in 5 mg at $70 and 10 mg at $120, with third-party HPLC testing reported at 99.86% purity and a COA published against the lot; volume pricing scales to 40% off at 10 or more vials, and code PSTACK applies through the tracked link. Whichever compound you are sourcing, match the COA to the exact lot number on the vial before anything else — an unmatched COA tells you nothing about what you received. Both are sold strictly for laboratory and research use. Neither is a drug, and neither is intended for human or veterinary use. Which Compound Fits Which Research Question? Research question Better conceptual fit Reason Isolating amylin receptor biology from calcitonin signalling Eloralintide Selective for the amylin receptor by design Studying dual amylin/calcitonin receptor pharmacology Cagrilintide DACRA profile engages both receptor families Working against the deepest published dataset Cagrilintide Phase 2 dose-finding plus a 68-week phase 3 monotherapy arm Tracking the newest clinical signal in the class Eloralintide 48-week phase 2 published in The Lancet , ObesityWeek 2025 Understanding amylin-plus-incretin combination strategy Both Cagrilintide pairs with semaglutide in CagriSema; eloralintide is being developed alongside tirzepatide Bottom Line Cagrilintide vs eloralintide is not a question of which molecule is stronger. It is a question of whether amylin biology works better clean or broad. Cagrilintide has the longer record, the larger dataset, a 68-week phase 3 monotherapy result, and a regulatory filing behind the combination it anchors. Eloralintide has the more provocative phase 2 numbers, a tolerability profile that improved with slower escalation, and a selectivity thesis that has not yet been tested at phase 3 scale. Until a trial randomises the same population to both compounds, that is where the comparison ends. Everything above is cross-trial and directional, and both compounds remain investigational and unapproved. Frequently Asked Questions Is eloralintide the same as cagrilintide? No. Both are once-weekly amylin receptor agonists, but eloralintide is selective for the amylin receptor while cagrilintide also activates the calcitonin receptor, making it a dual amylin and calcitonin receptor agonist. They are developed by different companies — Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk respectively — and are structurally distinct molecules. Is eloralintide FDA-approved? No. Eloralintide is investigational as of August 2026. Its phase 2 results were published in The Lancet and presented at ObesityWeek 2025, and Eli Lilly stated phase 3 enrolment was planned to begin by the end of 2025. Is cagrilintide FDA-approved? No. Cagrilintide monotherapy is investigational. Novo Nordisk filed an NDA with the FDA on 18 December 2025 for CagriSema, the fixed-dose cagrilintide/semaglutide combination, but that submission covers the combination product and is still under review — it is not an approval of cagrilintide on its own. Which produced more weight loss in trials, cagrilintide or eloralintide? Eloralintide's top dose arm produced the higher reported number: 20.1% mean weight reduction at 9 mg over 48 weeks, versus 11.8% for cagrilintide 2.4 mg over 68 weeks. But these come from different trials with different durations, sample sizes, populations and analysis conventions, so the gap is not a measure of relative potency. Has there been a head-to-head trial of cagrilintide vs eloralintide? No. No trial has randomised the same population to both compounds. Every comparison currently available, including this one, is cross-trial and should be treated as directional rather than conclusive. What does "selective amylin receptor agonist" actually mean? It means the molecule activates amylin receptors much more strongly than the closely related calcitonin receptor. Phase 1 work characterised eloralintide as activating the human amylin 1 receptor roughly 12 times more potently than the human calcitonin receptor, so calcitonin engagement is minimal at clinical exposures. What is a DACRA? DACRA stands for dual amylin and calcitonin receptor agonist — a compound that meaningfully activates both receptor families rather than just one. Cagrilintide is described this way in the pharmacology literature, which is precisely what distinguishes it from eloralintide. How many people were in each trial? Eloralintide's phase 2 randomised 263 adults over 48 weeks. Cagrilintide's phase 2 dose-finding trial randomised 706 adults over 26 weeks, and its phase 3 monotherapy data came from the REDEFINE 1 trial, which enrolled 3,417 adults over 68 weeks across all arms. Which has better tolerability? Both reported gastrointestinal symptoms as the most common adverse events, mainly mild to moderate. Eloralintide's phase 2 showed GI incidence similar to placebo in the 1 mg and 3 mg arms and higher rates at higher doses, with slower escalation reducing incidence. Cagrilintide monotherapy in REDEFINE 1 showed a 1.0% discontinuation rate attributable to nausea versus 0.1% on placebo. Without a head-to-head trial, no reliable tolerability ranking can be made. Is cagrilintide the same thing as CagriSema? No. Cagrilintide is a single amylin analog. CagriSema is a fixed-dose combination of cagrilintide 2.4 mg with semaglutide 2.4 mg, a GLP-1 receptor agonist. Cagrilintide is the amylin half of that combination and is also being developed as a standalone candidate in the RENEW phase 3 programme. Can either compound be used by people? No. Neither is FDA-approved for human use, and neither is available as a prescription therapy. Material sold under these names on the research market is for laboratory research only, is not a drug, and is not intended for human or veterinary use. Why does the calcitonin receptor difference matter? It is the central open question in the class. If calcitonin receptor activity contributes to the weight-loss effect, cagrilintide's broader profile is an advantage. If it mainly contributes to side effects or long-term safety questions, eloralintide's selectivity is. The available data does not yet settle it, because the two compounds have never been compared directly. References Eli Lilly and Company. Lilly's selective amylin agonist, eloralintide, demonstrated meaningful weight loss and favorable tolerability in a Phase 2 study of adults with obesity or overweight. 6 November 2025. Lilly Investor Relations Eloralintide, a selective amylin receptor agonist for the treatment of obesity: a 48-week phase 2, multicentre, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial. The Lancet . 2025. The Lancet Novo Nordisk. Novo Nordisk presents phase 3 data for next-generation amylin cagrilintide, leading to advancement into dedicated clinical programme. 16 September 2025. GlobeNewswire Lau DCW, et al. Once-weekly cagrilintide for weight management in people with overweight and obesity: a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled and active-controlled, dose-finding phase 2 trial. Lancet . 2021;398:2160-2172. PubMed Bhattachar SN, et al. Eloralintide, a selective, long-acting amylin receptor agonist for treatment of obesity: Phase 1 proof of concept. Diabetes Obes Metab . 2026. PubMed Novo Nordisk. Novo Nordisk files for FDA approval of CagriSema. 18 December 2025. PR Newswire Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only. Cagrilintide and eloralintide are investigational compounds and are not FDA-approved for human use. All efficacy and safety figures cited come from published clinical trials conducted under medical supervision and are reported here for educational purposes only. Research-grade material sold under these names is intended for laboratory use only and is not for human or veterinary consumption. PeptideStack does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment recommendations, dosing guidance, or instructions for human use. PeptideStack page context: visitors can use the header navigation to reach the product catalog, blog, calculators, supplier pages, discount-code pages, contact page, legal policies, privacy policy, terms, and research disclaimer. 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