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Cagrilintide

Experimental appetite drug for weight loss

Novo Nordisk; half of CagriSema

Match every finding to its exact substance, formulation, route and study population. A related molecule or approved medicine does not validate a catalog vial.

Human / product-specific records · Mechanistic / indirect records
Explore the evidenceWhy people take it
Compare this compoundRead original sources Community reports
Schematic illustration · View structure evidence

Simplified drawing of a chain of 37 amino acids, with its fatty-acid tail

At a glance

Why people take it. And what backs it up.

  1. Add to weight-loss shots

    Proven with semaglutide; not approved

    Many add small weekly doses to semaglutide, tirzepatide or retatrutide for extra weight loss; large trials paired full doses with semaglutide.

    Sources (6)

  2. Quiet food noise

    People report it, not studied

    Users say it quiets cravings and constant thoughts about food in a different way from GLP-1 drugs, by mimicking the fullness hormone amylin.

    Sources (3)

  3. Lose weight on its own

    Early human studies

    A few take it alone, instead of GLP-1 drugs, to lose weight or keep it off; in a trial, it cut weight about 12%.

    Sources (3)

Evidence briefing

Sources checked

What the sources support.

Cagrilintide is an investigational long-acting amylin analogue studied alone and with semaglutide as CagriSema. REDEFINE 1 reported monotherapy and combination results; the roughly 20% result belongs to the combination, and neither is FDA-approved.

Keep in mind

Monotherapy phase 3 figures were sponsor-released; results for CagriSema cannot be attributed to cagrilintide alone.

Identity and research status reviewRead the original sources

The research. What’s been studied.

TapClick a dotted word to see what it means.

  • Early human studies

    Weight loss on its own

    In REDEFINE 1, cagrilintide alone reduced body weight by about 11.5% in the treatment-policy analysis, or 11.8% when participants adhered to treatment, over 68 weeks.

  • Human evidence

    Combined with semaglutide

    CagriSema, the investigational combination, reduced body weight by about 20% over 68 weeks in the Phase 3 REDEFINE 1 trial. In REDEFINE 5 (331 adults in Japan and Taiwan), it cut weight by 18.4% versus 11.9% with semaglutide alone, assuming treatment was taken as intended. These results are for the combination, which is not approved.

  • Early human studies

    Amylin pathway

    Cagrilintide is a long-acting analogue being studied for its effects on fullness and appetite.

What do these labels mean?
  • Human evidence: approved-drug data or larger human studies, within the populations and uses studied.
  • Early human studies: small, preliminary or limited human studies.
  • Animal & lab studies: animal or laboratory findings that do not establish effects in people.
  • Unverified: a proposed use or claim without verified supporting clinical evidence.
How each claim was reviewed (4)

Reported effects and evidence.

A citation may support, qualify or correct a claim. Read the study scope; a laboratory result is not an established benefit in people. Each review covers a claim as it was first collected; the tiles above show the collection’s current wording.

  1. Human phase 3 active arm

    Review of “Weight loss on its own”

    REDEFINE 1 included a cagrilintide-alone arm. Display its exact 68-week result with the analysis population and estimand.

    Limitations and applicability. REDEFINE 1 included cagrilintide alone; verify the exact monotherapy estimate and estimand in full tables before displaying 11–12%.

    Original collected claim and review history

    Original title: Weight loss on its own

    About 11–12% average weight loss over 68 weeks in the REDEFINE 1 trial.

    Original headline statistic: About 11–12%

    Original label: early. Preserved for traceability; the reviewed wording above qualifies this record.

    Record cagrilintide:benefit:1 · Annotated 2026-10-01 · Review method

  2. Human phase 3 combination RCT

    Review of “Boosts semaglutide”

    Cagrilintide plus semaglutide produced 20.4% mean weight loss versus 3.0% with placebo at 68 weeks in REDEFINE 1.

    Limitations and applicability. 20.4% is the combination treatment-policy estimate; it is not cagrilintide monotherapy.

    Original collected claim and review history

    Original title: Boosts semaglutide

    Combined with semaglutide (CagriSema), average weight loss reached about 20%.

    Original headline statistic: About 20%

    Original label: early. Preserved for traceability; the reviewed wording above qualifies this record.

    Record cagrilintide:benefit:2 · Annotated 2026-10-01 · Review method

  3. Mechanistic; molecule-specific gastric-emptying claim unverified

    Review of “Fullness after meals”

    Cagrilintide is a long-acting amylin analogue. Label fullness and gastric-emptying explanations as proposed pharmacology pending a direct citation.

    Limitations and applicability. Amylin-analogue identity is supported; direct fullness/gastric-emptying measurements require their own source.

    Original collected claim and review history

    Original title: Fullness after meals

    Mimics amylin, the pancreas’s own fullness signal, and slows stomach emptying.

    Original label: early. Preserved for traceability; the reviewed wording above qualifies this record.

    Record cagrilintide:benefit:3 · Annotated 2026-10-01 · Review method

  4. Mechanistic interpretation

    Review of “A different pathway”

    Cagrilintide and semaglutide target different receptor systems; their combination has been tested in randomized trials.

    Limitations and applicability. Complementary receptors do not by themselves prove why an individual benefits; brainstem-versus-GLP-1 framing is oversimplified.

    Original collected claim and review history

    Original title: A different pathway

    Works through the brainstem rather than GLP-1 receptors, which is why it adds to GLP-1 drugs rather than duplicating them.

    Original label: early. Preserved for traceability; the reviewed wording above qualifies this record.

    Record cagrilintide:benefit:4 · Annotated 2026-10-01 · Review method

The research in detail

Evidence category

Human trials, not approved

REDEFINE 1 studied cagrilintide alone and with semaglutide. At 68 weeks, the treatment-policy estimates were about 11.5% weight reduction with cagrilintide alone and 20.4% with CagriSema. These remain investigational trial results.

Evidence is assessed claim by claim above. Regulatory approval, study design, findings and relevance are separate questions; there is no single evidence score.

Risks and unknowns. What to know first.

Collected cautions follow. These are not an exhaustive or independently validated safety assessment; claim references do not automatically support every caution.

  • Nausea, constipation and other GI effects, generally milder than drugs.

What people report

Show all 6 cautionsShow fewer cautions

Read this first: what “research use only” means

Published dosing records. What the trials used.

Historical label and trial records for the named product, route, population and indication. These records are not a personal schedule or a validated regimen for a catalog vial. Source attribution does not establish applicability.

Phase 2 trial

Phase 2 dose-finding trial of cagrilintide alone in adults with obesity, or overweight with high blood pressure or high blood fats, without diabetes (The Lancet, 2021)

Long-termClinical trial

Source: Lau et al., The Lancet, 2021

How
Injection under the skin
How often
Once a week
How long
26 weeks in the trial

Dose, step by step

  1. Weeks 1–2 0.6 mg
  2. Weeks 3–4 1.2 mg
  3. Weeks 5–6 2.4 mg
  4. Week 7 on 4.5 mg

Limit. Highest dose tested: 4.5 mg once a week.

  • Other groups: 0.3 mg or 0.6 mg with no ramp; 1.2 mg (0.6 mg for 2 weeks first); 2.4 mg (0.6 mg, then 1.2 mg, for 2 weeks each).
  • People gave themselves the injections.
  • The dose was raised every other week, so the ramp lasted up to 6 weeks.

Phase 3 (REDEFINE 1)

Phase 3 trial (REDEFINE 1) in adults with obesity, or overweight plus a weight-related condition, without diabetes, where one group took cagrilintide alone (New England Journal of Medicine, 2025)

Long-termClinical trial

Source: Garvey et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2025 (REDEFINE 1)

Week 17 on
2.4 mg
How
Injection under the skin
How often
Once a week
How long
68 weeks in the trial (16-week ramp, then 52 weeks at 2.4 mg)
  • The dose was raised in steps over the first 16 weeks before reaching 2.4 mg.
  • Most people in the trial took cagrilintide 2.4 mg together with semaglutide 2.4 mg (CagriSema); 302 people took cagrilintide 2.4 mg alone.

These doses were tested in clinical trials under medical supervision. They aren’t approved for use, and a research vial is not the product that was tested.

Community protocols. Reported online. Not clinically validated.

Community reports Collection date: 30 Sep 2026

Grey-market cagrilintide is mostly added on top of retatrutide, tirzepatide or semaglutide. People usually start around 0.1–0.25 mg once a week and settle near 0.5 mg.

More about this

A smaller group climbs to 1–2 mg. Users disagree about the dose, the dosing interval, and whether to mix it with acetic acid.

Not testedFrequently encountered in reviewed sources

Add-on to a GLP-1 drug (“stack”)

Collected report · exact form and route are only as reported below. Source date and reporter identity are not separately verified. Collection checked 30 Sep 2026; presentation annotated 2026-10-01.

Frequency labels describe this collection, not a measured population. Contradictory records remain available.

Details and sourcesHide details
Dose
0.25–0.5 mg (some start at 0.1–0.125 mg)
How often
Once a week
Route
Injection under the skin
How long
Open-ended; reports run from a few weeks to several months
Ramp
Often 0.25 mg for about 4 weeks, then 0.5 mg. Cautious users step up weekly in small amounts (for example 0.125 mg, then 0.2 mg, then 0.25 mg).
Mixing
5 mg vial + 2 mL bacteriostatic water is common. Some add acetic acid (about 0.5 mL) and top up with bacteriostatic water to bring the pH to about 4.
  • Almost always taken with retatrutide, tirzepatide or semaglutide rather than on its own. Some users lower their retatrutide dose when they add it.
  • Several people report that even a very small first dose (0.1–0.2 mg) caused days of nausea, tiredness and near-total loss of appetite.
Sources (4)

Not testedSometimes seen

Higher dose (1–2 mg)

Collected report · exact form and route are only as reported below. Source date and reporter identity are not separately verified. Collection checked 30 Sep 2026; presentation annotated 2026-10-01.

Frequency labels describe this collection, not a measured population. Contradictory records remain available.

Details and sourcesHide details
Dose
1–2 mg
How often
Once a week; at least one user doses every other week
Route
Injection under the skin
How long
Weeks to months
Ramp
Slow climb over a couple of months
  • Usually people whose appetite control faded on a lower dose, or who are also on high-dose retatrutide or tirzepatide.
  • Some report no extra appetite effect at 1 mg.
Sources (3)
Show all 3 protocolsShow fewer protocols

Not testedFringe

Same-day dosing with tirzepatide every few days

Collected report · exact form and route are only as reported below. Source date and reporter identity are not separately verified. Collection checked 30 Sep 2026; presentation annotated 2026-10-01.

Frequency labels describe this collection, not a measured population. Contradictory records remain available.

Details and sourcesHide details
Dose
About 0.35–0.4 mg cagrilintide with about 3 mg tirzepatide per shot
How often
Every 4 days (one user; earlier alternated the two drugs every 2 days)
Route
Injection under the skin
Timing
Both drugs on the same day
  • One person’s schedule; shown to illustrate how far interval-splitting goes.
Sources (1)

Where the numbers come from

User-driven. The common 0.25 mg start matches the first step of Novo Nordisk’s trial ramp, but most grey-market users stop at 0.5 mg or below, far under the trial’s top dose. No clinic, book or practitioner protocol was found. The acetic-acid mixing practice comes from forum worries that cagrilintide forms fibrils (clumps) at a neutral pH.

Research notes

All protocols here come from Reddit; no clinic, vendor, book or podcast protocol was found. Most reporters are also taking 3–15 mg of retatrutide or tirzepatide, so side effects cannot be pinned on cagrilintide alone. The acetic-acid and fibril concerns are community-generated and untested. In December 2025 users reported vendors dropping cagrilintide and other GLP-1 products, so supply and product quality may be shifting.

Taken with

Measurement basics and calculator

Explore vial arithmetic

What it is. In plain English.

A long-acting amylin mimic being developed alongside semaglutide.

An engineered version of amylin, a hormone the pancreas releases together with insulin. A fatty-acid chain gives it a week-long .

It is designed to activate amylin receptors, which are involved in fullness and stomach emptying. Its effects alone and combined with semaglutide are being studied; the combination results do not show that the drugs work through identical pathways.

Reviewed 2026-10-01.

Structure. What it really looks like.

Experimental

Cryo-EM structure of cagrilintide (amber) bound to the human amylin 1 receptor (gray).

Cagrilintide (amber) bound to the human amylin 1 receptor (gray), which is the calcitonin receptor together with its partner protein RAMP1. Also part of the experiment, but not drawn: a G protein, an antibody fragment, and some sugars and lipids.

Missing parts

  • The whole peptide is resolved, but only about a quarter of the atoms of its fatty-acid chain are, so most of that chain isn’t drawn.

9BP3, Cao et al., 2025. Rendered with Mol* (Sehnal et al., 2021) from RCSB PDB data (Berman et al., 2000).

Specs. The facts at a glance.

Type
amylin analog
Sold as
  • Cagrilintide 5 mg
  • Cagrilintide 10 mg
Regulatory status
Investigational. Neither cagrilintide alone nor CagriSema is FDA-approved.
Also known as
Novo Nordisk; half of CagriSema

Sources. What this page rests on.

Every source behind this page, with what it says and when it was checked, is in the Source library.

Cagrilintide in the Source library

Original overview and research notes · annotated 2026-10-01

Historical collection text. Read alongside the claim corrections above; identity or evidence qualifications may supersede this wording.

Appetite control through amylin

A long-acting amylin mimic being developed alongside semaglutide.

An engineered version of amylin, a hormone the pancreas releases together with insulin. A fatty-acid chain gives it a week-long half-life.

Amylin signals fullness through the brainstem, slows stomach emptying and lowers glucagon after meals. It works through a different pathway than GLP-1, which is why the two are being combined.

In the REDEFINE 1 trial (NEJM, 2025), cagrilintide alone produced about 11–12% weight loss over 68 weeks. Combined with semaglutide as CagriSema, weight loss reached about 20%.

Original status record: Investigational. Not approved on its own.

More in Weight & metabolism.

Glossary

GLP-1 / GIP

Gut hormones released after eating that raise insulin and reduce appetite. The basis of today’s weight-loss drugs.

Full glossary

Glossary

Amylin

A hormone released with insulin that signals fullness through the brainstem. The target of cagrilintide and eloralintide.

Full glossary

Glossary

Half-life

The time it takes for half a dose to be cleared. Minutes for many natural peptides; about a week for drugs engineered with fatty-acid chains.

Full glossary

Glossary

Phase 1 / 2 / 3

Stages of human drug testing: safety in a few people, then effectiveness in hundreds, then large confirmatory trials in thousands. Most compounds fail along the way.

Full glossary

Glossary

Cryo-EM

Cryo-electron microscopy. Molecules are frozen in a thin layer of ice and photographed thousands of times with an electron microscope; the images are combined into a 3D map.

Full glossary

Glossary

Resolution

How sharp a structure is, measured in ångströms (Å; a ten-billionth of a meter). Smaller is sharper.

Full glossary

Glossary

Protein Data Bank (PDB)

The free worldwide archive of 3D structures of proteins and other molecules measured in experiments. Each entry has a four-character code, like 7KI0.

Full glossary