China’s BrightGene has served up a slice of early-stage data to remind everyone that it has a horse in the oral obesity race.
The Suzhou-based biotech has been evaluating its dual GLP-1/GIP agonist, dubbed BGM0504, across two placebo-controlled phase 1 studies.
The latest trial in China assessed the pill at doses ranging from 10 mg to 80 mg among 75 individuals who were either healthy or were overweight or had obesity, while a study in the U.S. administered doses between 20 mg and 80 mg to 80 patients.
After four weeks of daily dosing, the various cohorts of the China study saw least squares mean average weight loss ranging from 1% to 5.6%. Meanwhile, the cohorts of their U.S. counterparts saw weight loss between 2.7% and 8.2% after five to eight weeks of treatment.
Reaching 8% weight loss in eight weeks would be a promising start for oral BGM0504, although the proof will come in later studies—with BrightGene pointing out today’s data is only based on “preliminary analyses of ongoing clinical studies.”
So far, 2026 has seen a flood of oral GLP-1 readouts, following in the wake of Novo Nordisk getting the first oral GLP-1 to market in the form of oral Wegovy, which launched at the start of the year.
That 25-mg obesity pill demonstrated 16.6% weight loss over the longer period of 64 weeks in a phase 3 trial called Oasis 4.
Related
Meanwhile, a 36-mg dose of Eli Lilly’s own oral GLP-1 orforglipron saw 12.4% weight loss at 72 weeks. Unveiling the data back in August 2025, Lilly’s chief scientific officer Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., argued that the result was “as good as it gets” for a GLP-1 monotherapy in the once-a-day small molecule arena.
While gastrointestinal (GI) side effects have often cast a shadow over GLP-1 drugs, BrightGene said that this morning that these events had been “mostly mild (Grade 1) and transient” in the China study and “generally mild to moderate” but still transient in the U.S. trial.
The company is holding back detailed results from both studies for a future conference so it’s hard to read too much into oral BGM0504’s tolerability at this stage.
BrightGene is also developing a subcutaneous version of BGM0504, which is further ahead in development. In July 2025, the biotech linked its challenger to bigger reductions in blood sugar than Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic in a phase 2 trial, and BGM0504 is already undergoing an obesity head-to-head against Eli Lilly’s Zepbound as well as various phase 3 trials.
