Roche Pursues Muscle Study for Obesity After Halting Other Work

Roche Holding AG said it plans to keep studying an experimental compound for its muscle-growth potential during weight loss even as the company halts work on it in neuromuscular disorders because of a lack of effectiveness.

The scientific rationale for studying the compound, emugrobart, in obesity remains strong, Roche said in an e-mailed statement on Friday. The Swiss drugmaker on Thursday notified patients with spinal muscular atrophy and people with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy that it was halting work with the compound in both those diseases.

Roche has pointed to emugrobart as a key piece of its effort to help ...