Enveda weight loss maintenance pill mimics exercise in early tests

If you could design an oral treatment that limits appetite and mimics some effects of physical activity, you might call it exercise in a pill. Now a company is releasing early results for a compound to do just that.

The pill, the company hopes, can maintain weight loss without the common gastrointestinal effects of GLP-1s. The component of exercise it is designed to re-create is preservation of lean muscle mass, a concern when people yo-yo on and off GLP-1 drugs, losing more muscle each time.

Enveda, a five-year-old biotech based in Boulder, Colo., announced Phase 1 results in a press release Tuesday for an oral drug candidate that imitates lactate phenylalanine (lac-phe for short), a small molecule metabolite discovered by Stanford scientists.