Lexaria Bioscience Announces 2026 R&D Program Focused on GLP-1 Drug Delivery Advancements

Lexaria Bioscience Corp. (Nasdaq: LEXX) has announced the beginning of its 2026 research and development program designed to broaden pharmaceutical, intellectual property, and business development opportunities through new and improved formulations. The company released information on three representative studies that form primary areas of focus during at least the first three quarters of the calendar year, though these studies do not necessarily encompass the entire 2026 R&D program.

CEO Richard Christopher stated that the 2026 R&D program might be the most focused on practical results that the company has ever conducted. These studies are specifically concentrated on increasing the likelihood of pharma industry partnerships and the creation of new intellectual property. Some of this work must intentionally remain obscure at this time since, if successful, it could likely lead to expanded new IP and patent development.

Human Study GLP-1-H26-7, with study design nearing completion, is expected to be a 5-week parallel group study consisting of 3 different arms with primary goals of establishing safety and tolerability, as well as pharmacokinetic evaluation. This study will compare salcaprozate sodium-inclusive DehydraTECH-semaglutide tablet and capsule compositions to the recently launched, commercially available Wegovy semaglutide tablets under fasted pre-dose conditions. The study will evaluate differences between DehydraTECH capsules traditionally optimized for intestinal absorption and DehydraTECH tablets experimentally optimized for primarily stomach absorption. It will also evaluate the performance of a SNAC-enabled DehydraTECH-semaglutide formulation that was not previously included in Lexaria's Phase I Human Study conducted in Australia in 2025.

Study GLP-1-H26-7 will be designed to expand upon the findings of Human Pilot Study #1 which delivered exciting PK and safety results with an earlier iteration of SNAC-inclusive DehydraTECH-semaglutide capsules, but was limited to a single day of dosing and was thus incapable of achieving steady-state PK results as will be targeted here. The new study will be much more robust than Human Pilot Study #1, with roughly 30 subjects expected to be enrolled in each of the study arms concentrating on the tablet comparisons, and 15 subjects in the capsule study arm. While the larger study sample size increases costs, it also improves the prospective statistical reliability of the data generated, hopefully sufficient to encourage industry partnering if successful.

Lexaria is aggressively working with its third-party service providers with the intent of beginning recruitment in this study as early as April. Ethics board submissions will be made as soon as possible. The company will provide public updates when ethics board approval has been achieved. A final study report should be expected in Q4, 2026.

Animal Study GLP-1-A26-1 is expected to be a large, single-dose study with between 8-11 different arms. Blood samples are expected to be drawn over an 8-24-hour post-dose period to quantify the PK performance of the active ingredients. The company expects to test various SNAC-inclusive DehydraTECH-semaglutide formulations with prospective formulation performance enhancements from earlier glucagon-like peptide-1 related work; and in separate arms, test various DehydraTECH-cannabidiol formulations where similar enhancements may be beneficial for Lexaria's cannabidiol therapeutic program pursuits.

Brain samples will also be taken since DehydraTECH has, in the past, evidenced apparent superior absorption of active ingredients into brain tissue, an area of intense interest due to the fact that GLP-1 drug performance is increasingly understood to include or even depend upon involvement of brain neurochemistry, thus making brain biodistribution vital. A primary goal of this study will be to discover whether new and different formulation enhancements contemplated by Lexaria might enhance PK performance of either of these drug classes. Given the expected unique formulations and proprietary internal understanding of DehydraTECH capabilities, Lexaria is exploring, among other study objectives, whether it might be able to create new IP previously unknown to industry in the hopes of developing valuable proprietary technology that could be used in the oral delivery of GLP-1 and potentially other drugs.

Animal Study GLP-1-A26-2 is expected to be a large, single-dose study with between 14-18 different arms. This study will be focused on the delivery of DehydraTECH enhanced retatrutide and amycretin, both GLP-1 drugs that Lexaria has never studied before. The inclusion of retatrutide will mark the first time that the company has worked with a triple agonist which targets GLP-1, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypetide and glucagon receptors. Also unique to Lexaria's historical research, some of the study arms will be comparing the PK performance of test articles placed endoscopically in the intestine versus being swallowed thus targeting the stomach, in order to compare and contrast formulation functionality and performance in these distinct drug delivery dosing regions gastrointestinally.

As with Animal Study GLP-1-A26-1, a number of different formulations will also be evaluated to provide guidance on potential performance enhancements that may result from either the different formulation compositions or from the different routes of absorption. Blood samples are expected to be drawn over a 24-hour post-dose period to quantify the PK performance of the active ingredients. Each of the above noted studies will be conducted by independent third-party service providers and individually announced with additional details once they are ready to proceed. Final designs and details are still being completed and may vary slightly from the details provided. Additional R&D work, not yet disclosed, may be completed during 2026.