The glucagon and GLP-1 receptor dual agonist DD01 for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease and steatohepatitis (DD01-DN-02): 12-week results from a randomised, double-blind, multicentre, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Glucagon.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) is a major public health problem arising in the context of metabolic syndrome and obesity.

DD01 is a liver-targeted GLP-1 receptor and glucagon dual agonist being investigated for the treatment of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and MASH.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

DD01-DN-02 is an ongoing, randomised, double-blind, multicentre, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial conducted at 12 outpatient clinical sites in the USA.

Adults aged 18-70 years with obesity or who were overweight (BMI ≥25 kg/m2) were included in the study.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and multicenter study.

Because people in this Glucagon study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Glucagon, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Glucagon, giving a reference point.

Running at several centres spread the Glucagon study over different clinics and patient groups.

The randomisation sequence was computer-generated by an independent statistician.

Missing primary endpoint data were handled using multiple imputation under a missing-at-random assumption.

This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT06410924) and is ongoing but closed to new participants.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists, Fatty Liver, Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, Obesity and Liver.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Glucagon.

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2026 (The lancet. Gastroenterology & hepatology), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: the Glucagon compound page, all human trials.