Origins
When was cagrilintide created?
Cagrilintide is an amylin analogue, and its design problem was not survival in blood but a tendency of the natural hormone to clump.
The short answer
| Date | First described around 2018 |
| Who | Novo Nordisk |
| Where | Denmark |
| Origin | Designed, not found — it does not occur naturally in this form. |
Where it came from
Amylin is a hormone secreted alongside insulin, and human amylin has an awkward property: it aggregates. Chains stick to one another and form fibrils, which makes the natural sequence extremely difficult to keep in solution and therefore difficult to formulate as anything.
That is a different obstacle from the one the incretin analogues face, and it calls for different chemistry. Cagrilintide substitutes residues in the stretches responsible for the aggregation and attaches a fatty acid for albumin binding, giving a molecule that stays in solution and lasts long enough for weekly use.
It appears in the literature from around 2018, carrying the development code AM833, and it is often discussed alongside semaglutide because the two have been trialled together as a combination.
Why it is called that
The -lintide ending marks an amylin analogue, from the older name for the hormone. It is an international nonproprietary name.
Where it stands now
Cagrilintide has not been approved as a medicine in any country.
What this page does not say
Nothing above is a statement about what Cagrilintide does in a body, and none of it is guidance on use. A compound’s history is a record of laboratories and dates; it is not evidence for anything, and the fact that a programme was looking for something is not a finding that it was found.
More on Cagrilintide
What is Cagrilintide? · The full timeline · Cagrilintide — sizes and prices
