WEIGHT LOSS DRUG FAIL-Pfizer’s latest weight loss drug didn’t make the cut, again, with the company saying over the weekend that it will discontinue developing the twice-daily treatment, danuglipron.The pharma giant’s latest creation joined a long list of scrapped obesity pills, according to CNBC.

Side effects were to blame: Pfizer is discontinuing the meds due to side effects such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea leading to more than 50% of the test subjects discontinuing the medication, despite losing weight, according to the disclosure.

Retracing steps to create a one-day pill. The company announced that it will share data on a once-daily version of the medicine, as opposed to two, which will determine the future direction of the drug.

Danuglipron is not the first Pfizer drug to fail this year. It abandoned another one-daily weight loss pill last June due to concerns over elevated liver enzymes.

Weight loss drugs are gaining traction as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovyand Ozempiccontinue to gain success. The popular meds, the latter of which is actually meant for diabetes treatment,have disappeared off the shelves in the past year as they are used for sustainable weight loss. In 3Q 2023, manufacturer Novo Nordisk saw sales of Ozempic hit USD 3.48 bn, rising 56% y-o-y.

Developing a safe and effective weight loss drug isn’t a walk in the park. Numerous obesity drug candidates have been rejected and declined by US regulators or ultimately withdrawn from the market due to unintended side effects, such as increasing the risk of cancer, psychiatric problems, and elevatingblood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes.

The word “authentic” is the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s word of the year.While it’s not exactly a “new” word — in the way that Gen Z terminology has made its way into our daily lexicon — authentic was the most-searched word of the year, compiling a whopping half a mn entries, according to Merriam-Webster’sstatement.

The search surge is related to several themes defining 2023 like AI, celebrities, personal identity, and social media. Being “genuine” or “real” has become a desired quality in society especially, through social media with the sudden popularity of the app BeReal, or with restaurants when looking for the “real thing” dishes.

Being “authentic” on the internet attracts attention and revenue. Paradoxically, the pursuit of authenticity has become a performance, with “authentic content creators” considered the standard for building trust.

SIGN OF THE TIMES- Many of the words that made it onto this year’s list have a clear connection to the significant news events: Some of these words include coronation, referring to King Charles’ … coronation; dystopian, as books and movies have increasingly been coming out in this genre; EGOT, which stands for the highly coveted milestone of earning the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards; implode, indicating the incident with OceanGate’s Titan submarine, and more like doppelganger, covenant, kibbutz, elemental, X, and indict.

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