Mazdutide is a GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist, approved in China for weight management and nowhere else. Its human evidence is one Phase 3 program, run in China, reporting about 14% mean weight loss at 48 weeks. That's the lowest number any dual agonist has published.
The short answer. Mazdutide is a GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist built on an oxyntomodulin backbone, the gut hormone that already hits both receptors.
- Innovent Biologics developed it under license from Eli Lilly, and China has approved it for weight management.
- The Phase 3 GLORY-1 trial reported about 14% mean body-weight loss at 48 weeks, the lowest figure among the dual agonists.
- It has no FDA or EMA approval, and the program has stayed oriented to China, so no Western trial exists.
Mazdutide is a GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist. It is built on an oxyntomodulin backbone. Innovent Biologics made it. The license came from Eli Lilly. China has approved it. The use is weight management. Its Phase 3 trial is GLORY-1. It ran 48 weeks. It showed about 14% mean body-weight loss. That is the lowest figure among the dual agonists. It is roughly the same as semaglutide.
What is mazdutide built from?
Mazdutide is an engineered copy of oxyntomodulin. That is a gut hormone your body already makes. Oxyntomodulin switches on the GLP-1 receptor. It switches on the glucagon receptor too. So the dual-agonist behavior is not bolted on. It was there in the parent molecule.
What Innovent's chemists added was staying power. Native oxyntomodulin clears in minutes. So the analog carries a half-life extension. That makes weekly dosing workable.
That is a different design philosophy from the rest of the class. Tirzepatide and retatrutide start from a GIP backbone. Receptor activity is engineered in. Mazdutide starts from a molecule that already had the receptor profile. It engineers the pharmacokinetics instead.
Does the biomimicry buy anything in the clinic? That is still open. We read the GLORY-1 result as no argument either way. We would rather say that than dress a design story up as a finding.
How much weight did mazdutide produce in GLORY-1?
About 14% mean body-weight reduction at the top dose. That ran over 48 weeks, in a Chinese Phase 3 trial. It places mazdutide near semaglutide. It sits below tirzepatide, CagriSema and survodutide.
It's a mildly surprising result. Everywhere else in this class, adding a second receptor has bought magnitude. Here it didn't.
- Trial: GLORY-1, Phase 3, run in China, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025.
- Duration: 48 weeks.
- Headline result: roughly 14% mean body-weight reduction at the top dose.
- Class position: semaglutide territory, below every other dual agonist with published Phase 3 data.
- Western data: none. No FDA or EMA trial program exists.
Where this falls short. GLORY-1 ran in a Chinese population. Baseline BMI distributions differ a lot between Chinese and Western obesity cohorts.
Percentage weight reduction doesn't port cleanly across populations that start from different weights. That's one reason cross-trial comparison in this class is harder than a bar chart makes it look. If you're ranking these compounds against each other, treat the 14% as a Chinese-cohort number, not a universal one.
Is mazdutide approved anywhere?
Yes, in China, for weight management. Mazdutide has no FDA approval and no EMA approval, and the development program has pointed at the Chinese market throughout.
For the most commercially contested drug class in the world, that's a deliberately narrow footprint. It also means the safety record you can read is a Chinese one, and there's no Western regulatory review to check it against.
For where mazdutide sits against the rest of the class, see our 2026 comparison. For the other GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist still in development, see survodutide.
Frequently asked questions
What is mazdutide?
Mazdutide is a GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist based on an oxyntomodulin analog. Innovent Biologics developed it under license from Eli Lilly, mainly for the Chinese market. It completed Phase 3 in China as the GLORY-1 trial.
How much weight does mazdutide produce?
Roughly 14% mean body-weight reduction at the top dose in GLORY-1, over 48 weeks. That's about semaglutide territory, and below the other dual agonists in the class.
Is mazdutide approved?
Mazdutide is approved in China for weight management. It isn't approved by the FDA or the EMA, so you won't find it through any US or European prescription channel.
How is mazdutide different from survodutide?
Both are GLP-1/glucagon dual agonists. Mazdutide is built on oxyntomodulin, the natural gut hormone that hits both receptors, so it's the more biomimetic of the two. It also produced the smaller weight effect in trials.
What to know now
- Mazdutide is a GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist built on an oxyntomodulin backbone, the gut hormone that already hits both receptors.
- Innovent Biologics developed it under license from Eli Lilly, and China has approved it for weight management.
- The Phase 3 GLORY-1 trial reported about 14% mean body-weight loss at 48 weeks, the lowest figure among the dual agonists.
- It has no FDA or EMA approval, and the program has stayed oriented to China, so no Western trial exists.
- GLORY-1 ran in a Chinese cohort, and percentage weight loss does not port cleanly across populations with different baseline BMI.
What we’re watching
The thing we're waiting on is a Western trial. Until one runs, every figure on this page comes from a single Chinese Phase 3 program, and nobody outside that program has reproduced it.
We're also watching whether the oxyntomodulin design shows up anywhere in the safety data. A biomimetic backbone is a reasonable hypothesis about tolerability. It isn't a result yet.
What people actually report
These are self-reports, not evidence. No control group, no blinding, and no independent check that the vial held what the label claimed. They are collected here because people asking about Mazdutide deserve an answer rather than a refusal, and because what the community believes is itself worth knowing. Quotes are excerpts; each links to the original post.
Uncontrolled, unverified self-report. In these threads mazdutide is usually described as an add-on rather than a solo run. Posters report 1 to 5 mg alongside 10 to 15 mg of tirzepatide, added deep into an existing run to break a stall. The word that repeats is mild: gentler appetite suppression than retatrutide, less heart-rate trouble. A few do describe running it alone. Dissent is loud. Several posters say survodutide hits harder, one warns it saves no money over retatrutide, and whether it raises resting heart rate is argued back and forth inside the same threads.
Where the community and the published record disagree. GLORY-1, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025 (N Engl J Med 2025;392(22):2215-2225, PMID 40421736, NCT05607680), tested mazdutide alone: 610 Chinese adults, 4 mg or 6 mg against placebo, minus 14.01% body weight at week 48 on 6 mg. Nobody in these threads is doing that. They run 1 to 5 mg on top of 10 to 15 mg of tirzepatide, deep into an existing run. GLORY-1 tested no combination at all, so the trial number describes a way of taking the drug that these posters are not taking it in. The trial's most frequently reported adverse events were gastrointestinal, and the abstract never mentions heart rate, which is the thing the threads argue about hardest.
“I was plateaued at max tirz dose for around 3 months and now the scale is finally moving.”
Currently on 15 mg Tirz. Do you need to decrease Tirz dosage as you increase Maz?
“I haven't tried Survo, but Maz was like Reta-lite and, combined with Tirz, just powered through the last 25 lbs I needed to lose.”
“If anyone is considering switching to mazdutide from reta to save money, that probably is not going to work.”
“Keep us updated on the mazdutide, we never hear about that”
“It works very well and is kind of mild too. Running it with Tirzepatide right now and loving it.”
“What if one of the most promising new weight loss medications isn’t from the US, but China?”
Mazdutide: The GLP-1/Glucagon Receptor Agonist Flying Under the Radar | Dr. Dan | Obesity Expert
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References
- Ji, L., Jiang, H., Bi, Y., et al. (2025). Once-weekly mazdutide in Chinese adults with obesity or overweight. New England Journal of Medicine, 392(22), 2215–2225. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2411528
- Melson, E., Ashraf, U., Papamargaritis, D., & Davies, M. J. (2024). What is the pipeline for future medications for obesity? International Journal of Obesity, 49(3), 433–451. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-024-01473-y
- Wilding, J. P. H., Batterham, R. L., Calanna, S., et al. (2021). Once-weekly semaglutide in adults with overweight or obesity (STEP-1). New England Journal of Medicine, 384(11), 989–1002. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2032183