Albiglutide is one of the few GLP-1 drugs that proved it could lower heart attacks and strokes in a major trial, and then got pulled from pharmacies anyway. It was sold as Tanzeum in the United States and Eperzan in Europe. GlaxoSmithKline developed it, the FDA approved it in April 2014, and the European Commission approved it in March 2014 (DrugBank; Wikipedia).
It belongs to the GLP-1 receptor agonist class, the same family as semaglutide, liraglutide and dulaglutide. Other names you may see for it include albiglutidum, the ATC code A10BJ04, and CAS number 782500-75-8.
What it is and how it works
Albiglutide is not a small peptide. It is a recombinant fusion protein: two tandem copies of a modified human GLP-1 sequence stitched onto recombinant human serum albumin, about 645 amino acids in total (Wikipedia). That albumin scaffold is the whole point. Native GLP-1 is destroyed within minutes by the enzyme DPP-4, but fusing it to albumin shields it and slows clearance. The result is an elimination half-life of roughly five days, which is why a single subcutaneous injection covered a full week.
At the GLP-1 receptor, albiglutide does what the incretin hormone does. It boosts insulin release when blood glucose is high, suppresses glucagon, slows gastric emptying and reduces food intake (DrugBank). The insulin effect is glucose-dependent, which is part of why GLP-1 agonists carry a relatively low risk of hypoglycemia on their own.
What the research showed
The headline evidence is the Harmony Outcomes trial, published in The Lancet in 2018. It enrolled 9,463 people with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease, randomly assigned to once-weekly albiglutide (30 mg, with an option to go to 50 mg) or placebo on top of standard care (Hernandez et al., Lancet 2018).
Over a median of about 1.6 years, albiglutide cut the primary endpoint, a composite of cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke, with a hazard ratio of 0.78 (95% CI 0.68–0.90, p=0.0006 for superiority). That is roughly a 22% relative reduction in major cardiovascular events. The result put albiglutide alongside a handful of GLP-1 agonists with proven cardiovascular benefit, not just glucose lowering.
As a diabetes drug, its glucose-lowering effect was real but more modest than some competitors, a point raised in reviews at the time (Scott, Drugs 2015).
Why it left the market
Here is the twist. GSK announced in 2017 that it would stop selling albiglutide, citing limited prescribing rather than any safety problem, with supply depleted through 2018 (Wikipedia). The Harmony Outcomes cardiovascular data actually published after that commercial decision. The drug was outsold by more potent rivals like liraglutide and the emerging semaglutide, and the positive trial did not bring it back.
So albiglutide is unusual: an approved peptide drug with strong outcome data that is no longer commercially available.
Regulatory and quality notes
Albiglutide was a fully approved prescription medicine, not a gray-market research peptide, during its time on the market. It was a prescription-only biologic, and as a peptide-based therapy it was not a WADA-style performance compound in the way some peptides are discussed.
Because the branded product was withdrawn, any albiglutide material now circulating outside of regulated supply would not carry the original manufacturer's controls. If you encounter it offered as a "research" peptide, the same cautions apply that apply to any such product: identity and purity are only as good as an independent certificate of analysis, and a third-party lab report on the actual vial matters more than a label.
Nothing here is medical or dosing advice. peptideone aggregates public facts and does not sell peptides, run tests, or recommend use. Products described as research peptides are not approved for human consumption.