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Novo Nordisk, one of Europe’s biggest companies, lost more than a quarter of its value on Friday after its latest obesity drug missed the drugmaker’s target for an average of 25 percent. weight loss.

CagriSema helped patients lose an average of 22.7 percent of their body weight in a late-stage trial, Novo Nordisk said Friday, slightly beating the results of Mounjaro, a rival treatment from Eli Lilly.

Martin Holst Lange, executive vice-president for development at Novo Nordisk, said that only 57 percent of patients received the maximum dose of the drug. “We are encouraged by the weight-loss profile of CagriSema,” he said.

The company’s shares were down as much as 27 percent in mid-morning trading in Denmark.

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are competing for dominance in a market that has grown sevenfold in just three years to $24bn by 2023, according to data analytics firm Iqvia.

Novo Nordisk hopes its “next-generation” weight-loss drug can lead the field, after its shares struggled to keep pace with Eli Lilly and it suffered a setback from disappointing results for an experimental weight loss pill in September.

“CagriSema is very important for us,” chief executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen told the Financial Times in November. “This is a next-generation product and it has the potential to be best in class.”

Patients receiving Mounjaro lost an average of 22.5 percent of their weight in phase 3 trials when taken as part of a regimen of improved diet and exercise. Those of Wegovy, also produced by Novo Nordisk, lost an average of about 15 percent in the same conditions.

About 40 percent of patients in the CagriSema trial achieved a 25 percent weight loss in 68 weeks.

CagriSema combines semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, with cagrilintide, another hormone that makes people feel fuller for longer.

A trial of 3,417 people who took a weekly injection found that the most common side effects were gastrointestinal, most of which were mild and moderate and decreased over time.

This is a developing story