Roche Holding said an obesity drug candidate met the main objectives of a midstage clinical trial by helping patients reduce their blood glucose and body weight.

The Swiss pharmaceutical company is seeking to enter the weight-loss drug market that Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk currently dominate, and sees the latest trial results reinforcing its ambitions to rapidly develop a portfolio of medicines for people with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Roche said its drug, enicepatide, achieved a mean reduction in blood-sugar levels of 2.65 percentage points, as well as a mean weight loss of 15.5%, after 48 weeks for patients who received the highest dose.

The trial enrolled adults with Type 2 diabetes who also had obesity or were overweight, and follows an earlier study that showed the drug helped patients without diabetes shed weight.

Among patients who were on the highest dose, 62% restored blood glucose to levels considered normal, having started the trial as diabetic, Roche said.

The safety and tolerability profile of enicepatide was consistent with that of similar therapies, and treatment discontinuation rates in the trial due to adverse events were low at 2%, it said.

The results were in line with what the company expected and position enicepatide as the centerpiece of Roche's portfolio, Roche's head of cardiovascular, renal and metabolism product development, Manu Chakravarthy, said in an interview.

The company sees in enicepatide an anchoring product on which to base potential combinations with other medicines to treat obesity and related illnesses, Chakravarthy said.

Roche said it plans to start a late-stage program to assess enicepatide's potential for glycemic control and cardiovascular outcomes in the first half of next year, on top of trials already under way in chronic weight management.

Rival Viking Therapeutics separately said on Tuesday that a similar drug it is developing achieved positive results in a maintenance study, which sent its stock sharply higher.