Obese and overweight patients clamouring for Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss and diabetes drugs have helped the Danish drugmaker grow into Europe’s largest company. Now, it wants to go a step further and stop people gaining weight in the first place.  

Novo Nordisk chief executive Lars Fruergaard J?rgensen has set his eyes on another “gold mine”: trial data that could offer clues on why some people are more likely to gain weight, and perhaps even lead to the first drugs designed to prevent obesity. 

J?rgensen recently set up a unit focused on “transformational prevention”, using artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to develop a “deep understanding” of obesity as a disease. Its biggest asset is the Select trial, a vast study of more than 17,000 people, designed to look at cardiac outcomes of people taking its weight-loss drug Wegovy, which also collected samples such as DNA and blood over time. Novo Nordisk will combine this with large public sources such as the UK biobank.