Addiction News Updates

Lilly studying GLP-1s, alcohol deaths double, AstaZeneca cuts their OUD drug

🌸 Eli Lilly announces research on GLP-1s for addiction in 2025! Wonderful news. We spoke to Lilly about this last week, they seem truly committed and will be looking at multiple SUD indications. Some outlets misreported this as studies of tirzepatide, but these will be new, unapproved GLP-1s being investigated, so the time to market will be longer. That said, this drug class has an excellent safety profile overall and probability of success here is high, in my opinion. The key questions: how quickly will Lilly move and what will the treatments cost?

💉 Outstanding article on GLP-1s, addiction, and pharma at Sherwood by Noah Davis, frequent Recursive Adaptation contributor.

🙌 We’ve had a big response to the release of our Innovation Agenda for Addiction, published by CASPR (us) and IFP. Great tweet by my co-author Willy Chertman giving a rundown of our findings and proposals.

A shorter version of the Agenda will be published by Federation of American Scientists in January, designed for policymakers. We are also now working in Washington to try to move some of these proposals forward, and are meeting regularly with Congressional offices. Please reach out if you’re in a position to help.

🍸 Alcohol deaths have doubled in the past 20 years. Of all the big addictions— smoking, opioids, alcohol, cocaine, meth — alcohol probably gets the least policy attention and handwringing because there’s no political will to change any of the laws on alcohol. Higher alcohol taxes work, but are unpopular. Better medication is the path that the public will accept and which can work at scale.

💊 AstraZeneca cuts their opioid use disorder drug, an orexin 1 receptor antagonist, due to an interaction with an antifungal during phase 2. Also from the article: "AZD4041 was AstraZeneca’s only clinical-stage candidate being assessed for the disorder. Trevena has a Mu receptor in phase 1 for OUD, while at one point Lyndra Therapeutics was investigating the synthetic opioid analgesic levomethadone for the indication." The pipeline for OUD medications is veryyyyyy sparse, hence the need for new incentives, as proposed in our Innovation Agenda, above.

👃 New trial announced of semaglutide for cocaine use disorder. Excellent news. Remember, semaglutide will be generic outside the US in 2026 and prices will drop fast— a study like this could have dramatic public health implications in countries like Brazil.