Amylin

Amylin is a hormone your pancreas secretes from the same beta cells that make insulin, and it is released with insulin every time you eat. Its jobs are complementary: the pramlintide label describes amylin as slowing gastric emptying, suppressing glucagon secretion, and regulating food intake through centrally-mediated modulation of appetite. It is a different hormone from GLP-1, working through its own receptors.

Amylin is not new to medicine. Pramlintide, a synthetic amylin analog, has been an approved injectable for people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes who use mealtime insulin, which means the pathway has a long clinical record even though it never became a weight drug in its own right.

What changed is the combination idea. Cagrilintide, a long-acting amylin analog, was tested with semaglutide in REDEFINE 1, a 3,417-participant trial that included semaglutide-alone and cagrilintide-alone arms. The combination produced an estimated mean weight change of −20.4% at week 68 against −3.0% on placebo, and moved a meaningful share of participants past 25% and even 30% weight loss.

The reason this matters is a ceiling problem. Pushing GLP-1 dosing higher eventually costs more in nausea than it returns in weight loss. A second, separate satiety signal offers a way past that ceiling without escalating the first drug — which is why several companies now have amylin analogs in development, alone and in combination.

The confusion worth flagging: amylin is not a GLP-1, and an amylin analog is not a weaker version of one. It is a different hormone with a different receptor family. Also, none of the amylin-based obesity products is FDA-approved, and FDA states that cagrilintide cannot lawfully be used in compounding.

For now this is a term to understand rather than act on. If you have hit a wall on a GLP-1, the productive conversation is about dose, adherence and switching rather than waiting for a pipeline drug. Our amylin evidence review and pipeline tracker follow the trials.