Liraglutide is a once-daily injectable GLP-1 receptor agonist from Novo Nordisk, first approved by the FDA as Victoza on January 25, 2010.
Liraglutide is a modified version of human GLP-1, a gut hormone that releases insulin when blood glucose is high, lowers glucagon and delays stomach emptying. The Victoza prescribing information states that it shares 97% of its amino acid sequence with native GLP-1 and carries a C-16 fatty acid (palmitic acid) on lysine 26. Native GLP-1 has a half-life of 1.5 to 2 minutes; liraglutide lasts 13 hours, which is why it is injected once a day rather than once a week like semaglutide or tirzepatide.
Its human evidence base is large. In the LEADER trial (NEJM, 2016), 9,340 adults with type 2 diabetes and high cardiovascular risk took liraglutide 1.8 mg daily (or the maximum tolerated dose) or placebo for a median 3.8 years. In the time-to-event analysis, cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke occurred in 13.0% on liraglutide and 14.9% on placebo (hazard ratio 0.87). In SCALE Obesity and Prediabetes (NEJM, 2015), 3.0 mg daily for 56 weeks produced a mean loss of 8.4 kg versus 2.8 kg on placebo, using last-observation-carried-forward imputation.
Yes. The FDA approved liraglutide as Victoza for type 2 diabetes in 2010 and as Saxenda for weight management in 2014; generics followed.
Victoza is also approved to reduce major cardiovascular events in adults with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease, based on LEADER. Saxenda was approved on December 23, 2014; its current label covers adults with obesity, adults with overweight plus a weight-related condition, and children 12 and older who weigh more than 60 kg and have obesity. The FDA approved the first generic of Victoza, made by Hikma, on December 23, 2024. Teva launched the first generic of Saxenda on August 28, 2025, the first generic GLP-1 in the US indicated for weight loss.
Pharmacies sell liraglutide as branded and generic pens, so a vial sold as research liraglutide sits outside FDA oversight. Identity matters more than purity here: the Victoza label gives a molecular weight of 3751.2 daltons, and a mass spectrometry result far from that figure means the vial holds something else.
Before trusting a label, check that batch’s published result on our latest tests page or in Janoshik’s public results database. No results are published for liraglutide in our index yet. When the first published result arrives, a vendor leaderboard appears above.