NEW YORK, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- The pharmaceutical manufacturer Amgen announced on Tuesday that an experimental obesity drug helped patients lose an average of up to 20 percent of their weight in a year.

The drug, using the brand name MariTide, is given by injection once a month, compared with once a week for other obesity drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro that are already on the market.

The data came from a clinical trial involving nearly 600 people. It was a Phase 2 trial, testing effectiveness as well as safety. The drug still must go through additional clinical trial phases involving many more patients, and then receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before being sold to patients. The company has yet to set a price for the drug.

Amgen also did not provide detailed data, that will come in later in a peer-reviewed study and will be presented at a meeting, the company said. Instead, to meet requirements of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, it provided so-called top-line data that could affect its stock price, said The New York Times in its report about the development.

Jeffrey Flier, a diabetes and obesity researcher at Harvard, was quoted as saying the results were "promising," adding that MariTide "could be a future player in a highly competitive market." Enditem

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