What Cagrilintide is
Cagrilintide is a long-acting amylin analog from Novo Nordisk. Amylin slows gastric emptying and promotes satiety through a different receptor family than GLP-1, which is why cagrilintide is most often studied and used alongside semaglutide as the CagriSema combination.
It is not FDA approved as a standalone. The escalation below is the Phase 2 monotherapy schedule; combination protocols typically run both compounds on the same weekly clock.
What we do not know
- Most published evidence is for the combination with semaglutide. Monotherapy data is comparatively thin.
- Not approved. No long-term safety dataset.
Reconstitution math
Concentration is everything: the same 5 mg vial gives a different draw for every amount of bacteriostatic water you add. The table uses the common 2 mL setup for each vial size, which puts every unit on a U-100 insulin syringe at 25 mcg for the default vial. Dashes mark draws too small to measure or larger than the syringe.
| Vial | BAC water | Concentration | 0.25 mg | 0.5 mg | 1 mg | 1.7 mg | 2.4 mg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 mg | 2 mL | 2.5 mg/mL | 10 u | 20 u | 40 u | 68 u | 96 u |
| 10 mg | 2 mL | 5 mg/mL | 5 u | 10 u | 20 u | 34 u | 48 u |
Dosing and protocol
Phase 2 monotherapy escalation, 0.25 to 2.4 mg weekly.
With the longest half-life in this library (about 7.5 days), cagrilintide accumulates for roughly five weeks before leveling off. If you model it in the Planner stacked with semaglutide, a same-day weekly schedule for both matches how the trials dosed the pair.
Pharmacokinetics
Cagrilintide has published human pharmacokinetics: half-life about 7.5 days via a fatty di-acid albumin binder. The curves below are normalized one-compartment models built from the cited half-life, the same math the Planner uses. They show shape and timing, not absolute blood levels.
How it is thought to work
A long-acting amylin analog. Amylin is co-secreted with insulin and promotes satiety through a pathway separate from GLP-1, which is why it is studied combined with semaglutide rather than against it.
What the evidence supports
This table grades how well each outcome has been studied in humans, not how well Cagrilintide works. A strong grade means the question was asked properly, and the answer may still have been negative. Nothing here is inherited from a drug class, a close analog, or the parent molecule of a fragment.
| Outcome | Strongest published evidence |
|---|---|
| Weight loss as monotherapy | Human RCT |
| Weight loss, combined with semaglutide | Human RCT |
| Long-term safety | No data |
Storage and handling
Lyophilized vials keep best cold, dark, and dry; refrigeration is the community default and freezing lyophilized powder is common for long holds. After reconstitution, refrigerate at 2 to 8 C, do not freeze the solution, and date the vial. Bacteriostatic water's preservative keeps multi-dose use practical for about 28 days by USP convention, though our 120-day stability study found the preservative itself outlasts that window.
Got a certificate of analysis with your vial? Run it through our COA Reader: it reads the report in plain English, checks purity and mass against the label claim, and links the testing lab’s own verification page. Our guide to reading a COA explains what the numbers do and do not tell you.
Sources
- Lau et al., Once-weekly cagrilintide for weight management, Lancet 2021PMID 34798060
- Frias et al., CagriSema in type 2 diabetes, Lancet 2023