Eloralintide
Also known as LY3841136
Investigational once-weekly selective amylin receptor agonist for obesity, now in phase 3.
At a glance
- Category
- Metabolic & weight
- Status
- research chemical
- Route
- subcutaneous, once weekly
- Half-life
- not published as a figure; the pharmacokinetic profile is described by the developer as supporting once-weekly subcutaneous dosing, and exposure was dose-proportional over 12 weeks of weekly dosing 34
- Onset
- weight loss was measurable within weeks and continued through 48 weeks without a clear plateau at the higher doses 1
Not approved anywhere, for any indication. Developed by Eli Lilly. A 48-week phase 2 trial in 263 adults completed on 14 August 2025 and was published in the Lancet in December 2025 15. A phase 3 trial in obesity or overweight without type 2 diabetes, planned for 1,980 participants, began recruiting on 6 February 2026 with completion estimated for 2030 6. No regulatory filing has been announced. Despite having no approval anywhere, eloralintide is listed for sale by online 'research chemical' vendors; a vendor listing is evidence that something is sold under that name and nothing more — not that the vial contains the peptide, at the stated mass, in a sterile solution. The FDA issued warning letters in 2026 to firms selling unapproved incretin and peptide products under 'Research Use Only' labelling while supplying human dosing instructions, and warns that such products are of unknown quality 78.
Doping status: Prohibited (WADA S0, non-approved substances)
Checked against the WADA 2026 Prohibited List. For a specific product and country, Global DRO is the lookup athletes are expected to use — the List names substances, not brand names.
Mechanism of action
Eloralintide is a synthetic long-acting agonist at the amylin receptor. Amylin is co-secreted with insulin from pancreatic beta cells and acts in the area postrema and adjacent hindbrain nuclei to end a meal. The therapeutic idea is the same one behind pramlintide, cagrilintide and petrelintide: supply a durable amylin signal and appetite falls, by a route that does not overlap with GLP-1.
What distinguishes eloralintide from the amylin analogues already on this site is receptor selectivity. The amylin receptors are complexes of the calcitonin receptor with receptor activity-modifying proteins, so an amylin analogue can also hit the calcitonin receptor itself. Eloralintide was designed to avoid that. In cells expressing the human receptors it activated AMY1R about 12-fold more potently than the calcitonin receptor and about 11-fold more potently than AMY3R 4. Cagrilintide, by contrast, is deliberately non-selective across these receptors.
The developer's argument for why that matters is tolerability. In lean rats eloralintide produced significantly less conditioned taste avoidance than cagrilintide — a standard rodent proxy for nausea 4. In the human phase 1 multiple-ascending-dose study, gastrointestinal events were infrequent: diarrhoea in 10% of participants, nausea in 8%, vomiting in 4% 3. In the phase 2 trial, however, nausea reached 64% in the 6 mg arm and fatigue 46% in the 6-9 mg escalation arm 1, so the tolerability advantage is real at low doses and much less obvious at the doses that produce 20% weight loss.
This places eloralintide in direct competition with petrelintide, which Zealand and Roche are developing, and with cagrilintide, which Novo Nordisk is developing mainly as half of CagriSema. All three are long-acting amylin analogues aimed at weight management. Eloralintide is the only one of the three built around receptor selectivity as the differentiating idea, and no head-to-head trial between any of them has been published.
What the research shows
One completed 48-week phase 2 trial in 263 people, published in the Lancet, plus two published phase 1 studies. That is a real and reasonably substantial evidence base for a compound at this stage, and the phase 2 weight results are among the largest reported for an amylin analogue given alone. It is also entirely from the manufacturer, in a few hundred people, over less than a year, at a single country's sites. Phase 3 will not report until around 2030 6.
Research in humans
The phase 2 trial (Lancet, 2025) enrolled 263 participants at 46 US centres, aged 18-75 with a BMI of 30 or above, or 27 or above with a weight-related comorbidity, and without type 2 diabetes. They were randomised to placebo or to weekly subcutaneous eloralintide at 1, 3, 6 or 9 mg, or to escalation schemes of 6-9 mg or 3-9 mg, for 48 weeks. Mean weight change was -9% at 1 mg, -12% at 3 mg, -18% at 6 mg, -20% at 9 mg, -20% on the 6-9 mg escalation and -16% on the 3-9 mg escalation, against -0.4% on placebo. The most common adverse events were nausea and fatigue, both markedly dose-dependent 1. An earlier 12-week phase 1 multiple-ascending-dose study in 100 participants with obesity or overweight reported weight reductions of 2.6% to 11.3% across dose groups, with gastrointestinal events infrequent and most adverse events mild 3. A single-ascending-dose phase 1 study in 48 healthy participants reported -2.5% and -4.4% at week 4 after single 4 mg and 12 mg doses, against +0.6% on placebo 4. A phase 3 trial is recruiting 6.
Animal and lab research
In vitro, eloralintide preferentially activated the human amylin 1 receptor over the calcitonin receptor and over AMY3R; in rats both AMY1R and AMY3R were activated more potently than the calcitonin receptor, which is a species difference worth keeping in mind when reading the rodent tolerability data. In diet-induced obese rats it reduced food intake and body weight dose-dependently, with the loss falling mainly on fat mass, and pharmacokinetics were favourable in both rats and monkeys. It produced significantly less conditioned taste avoidance in lean rats than cagrilintide 4.
Caveats. Every study published so far was designed, funded and analysed by Eli Lilly, and the authors are Lilly employees and shareholders 134. The phase 2 trial ran at US sites only, enrolled 78% female and 78% White participants, and excluded people with type 2 diabetes, so generalisability is limited. Forty-eight weeks is short for an obesity drug intended for chronic use, and there is no cardiovascular outcome trial, no head-to-head against another amylin analogue or against a GLP-1 agonist, and no data on what happens after stopping. The selectivity argument is a mechanistic claim supported by cell and rodent data; the phase 2 nausea and fatigue rates at effective doses do not obviously bear it out. Nothing at all is known about the composition of material sold online under this name.
What it is used for
- Chronic weight management in obesity, or overweight with a weight-related comorbidity — the indication under study in phase 2 and phase 3; not approved anywhere 16
- Of research interest as a test of whether amylin receptor selectivity improves tolerability relative to the non-selective analogues cagrilintide and pramlintide 4
- Bought and self-administered outside any trial by people following the amylin pipeline, which is neither a studied use nor a supervised one
Dosing
- These are trial doses given under medical supervision in a registered study. No regulator has approved a dose of eloralintide, and nothing here is a recommendation.
- The dose-response is steep and so is the adverse-event curve. In the phase 2 trial, 1 mg weekly produced 9% weight loss with 11% nausea, while 9 mg produced 20% weight loss with 33% nausea and 43% fatigue 1.
- The trial deliberately compared fixed doses against escalation schemes. Escalating from 6 mg to 9 mg reached the same 20% weight loss as fixed 9 mg; escalating from 3 mg to 9 mg reached only 16% 1. That is one 48-week trial with modest numbers per arm, so the difference should not be over-read.
- The phase 3 trial lists four dose levels but does not publish the figures, so this site does not state them 6.
- Eloralintide is listed by 'research chemical' vendors and a self-dosing following is beginning to form among people who track the amylin pipeline, so a circulating schedule is recorded in the protocols section below as a social fact. It should be read as genuinely thin and new: the compound's phase 2 results were only published in December 2025, so there is little accumulated first-person experience, and what circulates is essentially the phase 2 dose grid (1-9 mg weekly) copied across, sometimes cross-referenced against cagrilintide practice. None of it has a published basis for grey-market material 1.
These figures describe what the literature and published protocols report. They are not advice and not a dosing instruction.
Protocols
Phase 2 trial schedule (obesity or overweight, without type 2 diabetes)
published trialSource: Phase 2, 48 weeks, ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06230523
| 48 weeks | Eloralintide 1 mg subcutaneously once weekly |
|---|---|
| 48 weeks | Eloralintide 3 mg subcutaneously once weekly |
| 48 weeks | Eloralintide 6 mg subcutaneously once weekly |
| 48 weeks | Eloralintide 9 mg subcutaneously once weekly |
| 48 weeks, escalating | Eloralintide 6 mg escalating to 9 mg once weekly |
| 48 weeks, escalating | Eloralintide 3 mg escalating to 9 mg once weekly |
| 48 weeks | Matching placebo once weekly |
263 participants at 46 US research centres, randomised 2:1:1:1:2:1:2. People with type 2 diabetes were excluded. Completed 14 August 2025 and published in the Lancet.
Phase 3 trial schedule (obesity or overweight, without type 2 diabetes)
published trialSource: Phase 3, ClinicalTrials.gov NCT07321886
| Duration per protocol | One of four blinded eloralintide dose levels, subcutaneously once weekly |
|---|---|
| Duration per protocol | Matching placebo, subcutaneously once weekly |
1,980 participants, recruiting from 6 February 2026 with estimated completion in 2030. The registry does not state the milligram values of the four dose levels, so this entry does not either.
Commonly reported user schedule (weekly subcutaneous)
user protocol — not validatedSource: User reports in amylin-pipeline and peptide communities together with vendor labelling
This is not a validated schedule. It is a pattern that circulates among users and sellers, reproduced because it is what people actually follow — not because it has been tested. No trial established these doses, this interval or this duration, and nobody is checking what is in the vial. Treat every number below as an assertion, not a finding.
| Reported start | commonly 1 mg once weekly, taken straight from the lowest phase 2 arm |
|---|---|
| Reported escalation | raised every few weeks toward a target, copying the trial's dose grid or an escalation scheme |
| Reported target | 3-9 mg once weekly; the higher figures are lifted from the arms that produced the largest weight loss |
These figures come from user reports and vendor labelling and have no published pharmacokinetic or safety basis for grey-market material; the self-dosing scene is small and recent, and this schedule is a copy of the phase 2 dose grid rather than anything drawn from accumulated experience. There is a specific catch a self-doser copying the top of that grid may not appreciate: in the trial the dose-response for side effects was steep, with nausea reaching 64% at 6 mg and fatigue 43-46% at 9 mg 1, so the doses that circulate as 'the effective ones' are also the ones the studied population tolerated worst. Identity, strength and sterility of any vial sold under this name are unverified, and the FDA has warned about incretin and peptide products marketed this way 78.
Schedules are reproduced as their source states them. Units, IU and milligrams explains why the figures are not interchangeable between products.
Reconstitution
- Solvent
- Not applicable to any legitimate product. In the trials the injection is supplied ready to use by the sponsor.
- Storage
- No approved storage instruction exists.
Worked example
No vial size or concentration can be given, because there is no licensed product and no manufacturer specification to quote.
A syringe calculator can convert a claimed milligram figure into units. It cannot establish that the vial contains eloralintide, that the mass on the label is right, or that the contents are sterile — and for a compound with no approved product, those are the questions that matter.
Safety
Side effects
- Nausea, strongly dose-dependent: 11% at 1 mg, 13% at 3 mg, 64% at 6 mg, 33% at 9 mg and 54% on the 6-9 mg escalation, against 14% on placebo in the 48-week phase 2 trial 1
- Fatigue, also dose-dependent: 0% at 1 mg rising to 43% at 9 mg and 46% on the 6-9 mg escalation, against 12% on placebo 1
- Vomiting and diarrhoea, reported at low rates in phase 1 (4% and 10% of participants) 3
- Decreased appetite, reported in 19% of participants in the phase 1 multiple-dose study — the intended effect, counted as an adverse event 3
- Headache, reported in 12% of participants in phase 1 3
- Injection site reactions
- Loss of lean mass alongside fat mass is expected at this rate of weight loss but has not been separately reported for this compound
- Long-term and rare effects are unknown; the longest published exposure is 48 weeks 1
Do not use if
- There is no approved product and no official contraindication list. What follows is inference from the trials and from the drug class, and should be read that way
- Type 2 diabetes — excluded from both the phase 2 and the current phase 3 trial, so nothing is known about use in that population 16
- Pregnancy and breastfeeding — no data
- Known hypersensitivity to the compound or its excipients
- Severe gastroparesis or other severe gastrointestinal disease
- Concurrent use of another amylin analogue such as pramlintide or cagrilintide would be duplicative and has not been studied
Interactions
Not studied. No drug-interaction study for eloralintide has been published. Pramlintide, the first amylin analogue to reach the market, carries a boxed warning about severe hypoglycaemia when used with insulin, and slows gastric emptying enough that its label advises separating oral medicines whose effect depends on rapid absorption. Both cautions are reasonable to carry over to any amylin receptor agonist until shown otherwise, but they are inferences from a different molecule, not findings about this one.
Sources
- Eloralintide, a selective amylin receptor agonist for the treatment of obesity: a 48-week phase 2, multicentre, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trialThe Lancet, 2025
- Amylin Analogs: The Next Major Class of Weight Loss TherapyReview, 2026
- Eloralintide, a selective, long-acting amylin receptor agonist for treatment of obesity: Phase 1 proof of conceptDiabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2026
- Eloralintide (LY3841136), a novel amylin receptor agonist for the treatment of obesity: From discovery to clinical proof of conceptMolecular Metabolism, 2025
- A Study of LY3841136 Compared With Placebo in Adult Participants With Obesity or Overweight (phase 2)ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT06230523
- A Study of Eloralintide (LY3841136) in Participants With Obesity, or Overweight Without Type 2 Diabetes (phase 3)ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT07321886
- Warning Letter to Gram Peptides (unapproved new drugs sold under a 'Research Use Only' label)US Food and Drug Administration, 31 March 2026
- FDA's Concerns with Unapproved GLP-1 Drugs Used for Weight LossUS Food and Drug Administration, content current as of 15 June 2026