GLP-1 Agonist / SubQ / 0.6-3mg daily
Liraglutide
Liraglutide is Novo Nordisk's fix for a hormone that vanishes in minutes: a fatty-acid tail anchors the peptide to serum albumin, stretching a one-to-two-minute half-life to about 13 hours. It became the first once-daily GLP-1 analog (Victoza, 2010) and the first GLP-1 agonist approved for obesity (Saxenda, 2014).
In plain words
Liraglutide is a lab-made copy of GLP-1, a gut hormone that prompts the pancreas to release insulin. A fatty tail added to the molecule makes it stick to a blood protein and last about 13 hours instead of a couple of minutes, which is what turned it into a once-daily injection. Large randomized trials, the strongest kind of evidence, back it up: about 8 percent average weight loss over 56 weeks against 2.6 percent on placebo, better blood sugar control than an older diabetes drug, and fewer heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths in people with type 2 diabetes at high risk. It is an approved prescription medicine, sold as Victoza for type 2 diabetes since 2010 and as Saxenda for weight management since 2014, with generic versions arriving from 2024. Two cautions sit alongside that record: a newer weekly drug, semaglutide, produced more than twice the weight loss when the two were compared directly, and the label carries a boxed warning based on thyroid tumors seen in rats and mice, a finding whose meaning for people is still unresolved.
At a glance
| Half-life | 0.54 days |
|---|---|
| Tmax | 0.42 days |
| Route(s) | SubQ |
| Published dosing range | 0.6-3mg daily |
| Vial strengths | 5, 10 mg |
Reference data from the DosePlot canon -- not a protocol recommendation.
Serum curve
Single 1.8 mg dose by SubQ, rendered from the same engine that powers the interactive chart. Relative levels, not lab values.
What does the evidence show?
Two things are labeled separately here because they answer different questions. The tier is how a study was built. The distance chips are whether that study touched this molecule, by this route, in a population resembling the reader. A randomized trial of a different molecule keeps its tier and still says nothing about this compound.
| Finding | Tier | Distance from use | Study |
|---|---|---|---|
| In the 3,731-patient SCALE trial, liraglutide 3.0 mg daily produced a mean 8.0 percent body-weight loss over 56 weeks versus 2.6 percent with placebo, with 63 percent of treated patients losing at least 5 percent of their weight. | rct | not recorded | Pi-Sunyer X, Astrup A, Fujioka K, et al. A Randomized, Controlled Trial of 3.0 mg of Liraglutide in Weight Management.New England Journal of Medicine 373(1):11-22, 2015 |
| As initial monotherapy for type 2 diabetes, liraglutide 1.8 mg daily lowered HbA1c by 1.14 percentage points over 52 weeks, versus 0.51 with the sulfonylurea glimepiride, with less hypoglycemia and weight loss instead of weight gain. | rct | not recorded | Garber A, Henry R, Ratner R, et al. Liraglutide versus glimepiride monotherapy for type 2 diabetes (LEAD-3 Mono): a randomised, 52-week, phase III, double-blind, parallel-treatment trial.Lancet 373(9662):473-481, 2009 |
| In 9,340 adults with type 2 diabetes at high cardiovascular risk, liraglutide reduced the composite of cardiovascular death, nonfatal heart attack, and nonfatal stroke versus placebo over a median 3.8 years (13.0 versus 14.9 percent, hazard ratio 0.87). | rct | not recorded | Marso SP, Daniels GH, Brown-Frandsen K, et al. Liraglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetes.New England Journal of Medicine 375(4):311-322, 2016 |
| Head to head in adults without diabetes, once-weekly semaglutide 2.4 mg produced more than twice the weight loss of once-daily liraglutide 3.0 mg: 15.8 versus 6.4 percent of body weight at 68 weeks. | rct | not recorded | Rubino DM, Greenway FL, Khalid U, et al. Effect of Weekly Subcutaneous Semaglutide vs Daily Liraglutide on Body Weight in Adults With Overweight or Obesity Without Diabetes: The STEP 8 Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA 327(2):138-150, 2022 |
| Sustained GLP-1 receptor activation causes thyroid C-cell hyperplasia and tumors in rats and mice, the finding behind the boxed warning; the same program found no C-cell response in monkeys at many times the clinical exposure, and human relevance remains unresolved. | preclinical | not recorded | Bjerre Knudsen L, Madsen LW, Andersen S, et al. Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists Activate Rodent Thyroid C-Cells Causing Calcitonin Release and C-Cell Proliferation.Endocrinology 151(4):1473-1486, 2010 |
| Liraglutide is a minor item on the grey market next to semaglutide and tirzepatide; community reports consistently point to the daily injection schedule and the much larger weekly peptide requirement as the reasons it is rarely chosen. | anecdotal | not recorded | community reports aggregated from reddit, MESO-Rx, and similar forumsno study |
How did it get here?
- preclinical1983-1987
- GLP-1 is identified from the newly sequenced proglucagon gene, and by 1987 infusion studies show it stimulates insulin release in humans. The catch: the DPP-4 enzyme destroys the native hormone within about two minutes, so it works only as a continuous drip.
- preclinicalearly 1990s-2000
- Novo Nordisk screens fatty-acylated GLP-1 analogs for a version that binds albumin tightly enough to last but loosely enough to stay active. The winner, NN2211, is 97 percent identical to human GLP-1: one amino-acid swap (arginine for lysine 34) plus a 16-carbon palmitate tail on lysine 26. The design series is published in 2000.
- first-human2002
- First published human studies of NN2211: dosing in healthy men measures a 12.6-hour half-life, several hundred times the native hormone's, and once-daily injection becomes realistic.
- clinical-adoption2010
- Approved as Victoza for type 2 diabetes (EU 2009, US January 2010) on the LEAD trial program - the first once-daily GLP-1 analog. The LEADER trial later makes it the first GLP-1 agonist shown to reduce cardiovascular events.
- clinical-adoption2014
- The identical molecule at 3.0 mg is approved as Saxenda in December 2014, the first GLP-1 agonist cleared for chronic weight management. Same 6 mg per mL solution, different pen, different label.
- grey-market2022-2026
- GLP-1 shortages push demand into compounding pharmacies and research-chemical channels, and lyophilized liraglutide turns up on peptide price lists - always a minor listing, since a single week at the 3 mg dose uses more peptide mass than a month of semaglutide. Teva starts selling an authorized generic in June 2024, the first stand-alone US generic is approved that December, and further generics follow through 2026. Licensed supply stays unsettled even so: liraglutide injection has been listed as in shortage since July 2023, and in August 2026 Novo Nordisk posted Saxenda for discontinuation in January 2027.
How is it made?
Liraglutide is a modified peptide, so making it looks more like brewing than like classical chemistry. Production happens in three stages.
1. Growing the backbone. Engineered baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) expresses and secretes a 31-amino-acid peptide: human GLP-1(7-37) with one deliberate edit, the lysine at position 34 swapped for arginine, so that exactly one lysine (position 26) remains in the chain. The peptide is recovered from the fermentation broth and purified by chromatography.
2. Attaching the tail. In a separate chemical step, palmitic acid (a 16-carbon fatty acid) is bonded to that single remaining lysine through a short glutamate spacer. Because stage 1 left only one attachment point, the tail lands in the same place on every molecule. The tail is the entire point of the product: it makes liraglutide cling to serum albumin and cluster into seven-molecule assemblies under the skin, so a hormone the body destroys in about two minutes instead seeps into circulation for a full day, largely shielded from the DPP-4 enzyme that clips native GLP-1.
3. Purification and fill. The acylated peptide is purified again, dissolved at 6 mg per mL in a sterile buffer with propylene glycol and a phenol preservative, and filled into multi-dose pen cartridges. The fermentation and the acylation are demanding but well characterized; what varies outside regulated manufacturing is everything after the chemistry - the sterile fill and the batch testing for identity, potency, purity, sterility, and endotoxins.
Worth knowing
The albumin-anchor chemistry was proven on insulin first: Novo Nordisk's insulin detemir carries a 14-carbon fatty acid, liraglutide a 16-carbon one, and semaglutide - designed by the same group - an 18-carbon diacid on an extended gamma-glutamate plus ethylene-glycol linker, the pairing that gave the highest albumin affinity without giving up receptor potency. Three drugs, one protraction principle, each stretch longer than the last.
Knudsen LB, Lau J. The Discovery and Development of Liraglutide and Semaglutide.Frontiers in Endocrinology 10:155, 2019
In the pen, liraglutide molecules self-assemble into seven-molecule clusters held together by their fatty tails. The clusters break up slowly under the skin, which is part of why peak blood levels arrive around ten hours after a dose rather than within minutes; albumin binding then carries the molecule the rest of the day.
Knudsen LB, Lau J. The Discovery and Development of Liraglutide and Semaglutide.Frontiers in Endocrinology 10:155, 2019
The 3.0 mg obesity dose was set by a 2009 dose-ranging trial in 564 adults without diabetes, all arms on a 500 kcal per day energy-deficit diet with increased physical activity: over 20 weeks, weight loss climbed with every dose step and had not leveled off at the highest arm tested, so the obesity program took 3.0 mg forward - two thirds above the 1.8 mg diabetes ceiling.
Astrup A, Rossner S, Van Gaal L, et al. Effects of liraglutide in the treatment of obesity: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.Lancet 374(9701):1606-1616, 2009
Reconstitution
Liraglutide ships lyophilized and is mixed before use; the published vial strengths are 5, 10 mg. The water volume you add sets the concentration, not the dose -- the calculator turns a vial size and a water volume into mg/mL, draw volume, and units on an insulin syringe.
Open in the reconstitution calculatorWritten and reviewed by Evan Marlow, developer of DosePlot · Updated 2026-08-27
Not medical advice. DosePlot is an informational tool, not a healthcare provider, and using it creates no provider-patient relationship. Do not start, stop, or change any protocol without the approval of a licensed healthcare professional.
Your whole protocol, in one place.
Free to start. Runs in your browser today.
14-day Premium trial inside, no card required.
Launch the web app