All right, everyone. I will now conduct a countdown from five, then seven, two, and one. As a reminder, your lines are open from this point on, and I think we will be heading to meeting. We are going live in five, four, three. Thank you for standing by. My name is Gayle, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome each and every one of you to the Gubra First Quarter 2025 earnings release. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, kindly press star one again. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn today's call over to Gubra to start the presentation. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Operator. It's our pleasure today to present first quarter results for you. Starting out, Gubra is a hybrid business model company. We are experts in preclinical research into metabolic disease and neighboring scientific areas. We have built a core research accelerator, meaning we have all the labs and testing facilities in-house in order to progress preclinical programs. This core research accelerator we use to provide services to external clients as well as to mature our internal research programs. That is the CRO business, the external clients, and the pipeline business, the D&P business for the internal programs. Today, we are roughly 270 colleagues, and in the service part of Gubra, we're working with a long list of various clients, 16 out of the top 20 pharma companies in the world either are or have been clients of Gubra.
Diving into the update from the recent quarter, the biggest piece of news was, of course, our landmark agreement with AbbVie on the GUBamy program. According to the terms of the agreement, we are granting AbbVie a global right to develop and commercialize GUBamy for various treatments, but, of course, especially with a focus on obesity treatment. For the economics of the deal, they are quite significant, and they are giving substantial economic freedom to Gubra. We have received $350 million in the upfront payment, and there is a milestone package of $1.875 billion as part of the deal, as well as tiered royalties on net sales. Also, in early April, we presented interim data from the ongoing multiple ascending dose trial, and there we could present the top-line data from the first two cohorts.
They confirmed what we did see in the single ascending dose part of the trial. Generally, GUBamy was very safe. It was well tolerated. We saw the only expected mainly GI-related adverse events, and they were generally mild. Also, we did see a very interesting weight loss when we treated with GUBamy for six weeks, and the weight gain in the placebo group was approximately 2%, whereas the weight loss in the 2 mg treatment group was approximately -7.8%. An almost 10% difference between placebo and active. Also, we have new data in the UCN2 program. That is our next in line obesity treatment.
The dataset that we now have is confirming the previous findings that using UCN2, you can actually alter the weight loss that you get with current weight management treatments so that it is a loss of pure fat mass and no longer a loss of lean body mass. Furthermore, we saw in this dataset that if you have been on one of the current treatments and lost some lean body mass, we can actually restore the lean body mass that was lost. A super exciting dataset, and we will also be presenting some more details from that today. Also, today in the quarterly update, we give numbers for the service business, the CRO business. We saw a revenue in the CRO business of DKK 51 million, which is slightly below the revenue that we saw in the same period last year.
We generally experience solid interest from our clients, so especially in Europe, that is the case. Going on to the pipeline, just a brief look at the pipeline. Currently, we have an impressive seven partnerships ongoing with the last addition of the AbbVie partnership. Also, we still have five unpartnered programs, as you can see, UCN2 being the most advanced of these. Also, we are preparing this for first-in-man study, which we expect to start late next year, sorry, early next year. Just a slide here on the AbbVie licensing deal. As mentioned, according to the terms of the agreement, we grant a global license to AbbVie for the further development and commercialization of the GUBamy amylin program. In the deal terms, we received $350 million upfront. We have received that. There is a milestone package which can amount to $1.875 billion . On top of that, we will be receiving tiered royalties on net sales. With this, I will hand over the word to Gubra CSO, Louise Dalbøge.
Thank you, Henrik. Now let's dive into some of our programs. Starting with the long-acting amylin analog, formerly known as GUBamy. GUBamy is in development for weight management indication and could be positioned as both an alternative or an addition to incretin-based treatments. Of key differentiating features, GUBamy has a balanced receptor profile on the amylin and calcitonin receptors, just like native amylin. It has an exceptionally long half-life of 11 days. GUBamy has been designed to be chemically and physically stable at neutral pH. This allows co-formulation with other anti-obesity agents. GUBamy is currently being tested in a phase I multiple ascending dose study. The trial design is shown on this slide. The study is a typically randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled study involving both males and females.
The study has two parts, part A, consisting of two cohorts receiving once-weekly treatment for six weeks. This part has now been completed. There is part B for testing higher doses during a longer treatment period. This part is ongoing and progressing as planned. From part A, we announced strong interim clinical results here in April. The data confirmed the general picture from the SAD study with a high degree of consistency within cohorts. The study showed that GUBamy was well tolerated with adverse events being predominantly GI-related, mild, and consistent with the SAD study. GUBamy demonstrated a remarkable dose-dependent weight loss. Mean weight loss in the 2 mg cohort was 7.8%, compared to weight gain in the placebo arm of 2% on day 43. The study also confirmed the favorable half-life of 11 days.
We're very excited about these positive results, which further supports the development of GUBamy for weight management indication and positioning GUBamy as best in class. Besides amylin, we're equally excited about a next-in-line internal obesity program. It's focused on high-quality weight loss, and it builds on a new mechanism using a long-acting UCN2 analog designed to promote fat mass loss while preserving lean muscle mass. This focus is critical because with current weight loss strategies, lean mass typically accounts for 20%-40% of the weight lost. We believe the time has come now to focus on the quality of the weight lost and not just the quantity as a key differentiating factor for the next generation of obesity treatment. Here we're talking about maximizing the loss of fat mass while preserving or even increasing lean mass.
In preclinical studies, our UCN2 analog has shown the ability to deliver this improved weight loss profile along with cardiorenal benefits. We have designed a very nice molecule, a selective UCN2 analog, excellent formulation properties, and allometric scaling from animals supports a once-weekly dosing profile in humans. In earlier studies in obese rats, we have shown that UCN2 combined with other weight-lowering agents enhances fat mass loss while fully preventing lean mass loss typically induced by these agents. We've now extended these findings using much older obese rats treated over a substantially longer period to better mimic an older obese population. The study aimed to, one, confirm the potential of UCN2 to increase lean mass and reduce fat mass in older animals, and two, to assess if we can reverse lean mass loss induced by prior semaglutide treatment. The results are striking.
UCN2 alone, as shown in green, modestly affects body weight, but significantly improves body composition. Semaglutide, shown in dark purple, reduces both fat and lean mass. When combined with semaglutide treatment, as shown in blue, UCN2 fully prevents the lean mass loss. It even increases lean mass, and it drives fat mass even further. In semaglutide pretreated rats, adding UCN2 from week three, as shown in pink, completely restored the lost lean mass and potentiated fat mass reduction. This highlights UCN2's potential as both a protective and a restorative agent in combination treatment. We are currently advancing UCN2 for the clinic. Initially, we discussed a 12-week study period, but we now are planning to extend it to 16 weeks. The primary objective is, of course, as always, safety and PICO, and we expect to initiate the phase I study early 2026.
Thank you, Louise. Just a few words on the financials, starting with the discovery and partnership business. The revenue was up slightly, but please bear in mind that the upfront payment that follows the closure of the successful closure of the transaction, which happened here in Q2, does not feature in the Q1 account. That is, again, a very substantial amount with $350 million, equivalent to DKK 2.4 billion. You can also see the total costs are going up. That is as expected, and it is that we are driving now two programs in parallel, both amylin and the clinical preparations for UCN2 and the non-clinical study. That is fully as expected. Turning to the CRO business, we saw a slight decline in revenue. Sometimes there are little small differences between quarters.
We still see a sound order situation, especially in Europe. When you have a large fixed cost base as you have with salaries, that's the main cost component in the CRO business. Of course, we also saw a decline in EBIT. Turning to the outlook for the full year, we maintain that. Again, to reiterate for the CRO business, we see a sound order situation, especially in Europe. Also for the D&P business, we have a cost guidance that is unchanged. With that, I'll leave the word over to the operator, and we can take questions.
Time. I would like to remind everyone that in order to ask a question, press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Okay, so your first question comes from the line of Suzanne Van Voorthuizen with Kempen. Please go ahead.
Hello team, thanks a lot for taking my question. This is Chiara Montironi on behalf of Suzanne from Kempen. Given the successful closure of the partnership with AbbVie, we were curious to know how you intend to use the upfront cash and potential milestones in the future. If I may ask a second question, if you could provide more color on the Q1 numbers for the CRO business, if you see any seasonality or anything like that. Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much for the questions. Starting out, use of receipts from the deal, allocation of capital. We are, of course, in a very lucky situation with significant economic freedom for the company. We are currently evaluating carefully all these possibilities, and we are still investing resources, analyzing M&A opportunities. We are also using resources, looking into various areas where we can expand our pipeline or our service offerings, our disease area focus, and generally assessing the various opportunities for us to develop the company. There is no specific new part to our communication at this point in time. We are still evaluating these new opportunities together with the board of Gubra. When it comes to the CRO revenue, we, as mentioned, still experience solid demand, especially from Europe. We see a bit of longer decision times from U.S.-based companies.
If that is just random or if it's a signal, it's difficult to say this soon, I would say. We are not expecting this to influence the full year result of the service business, and we maintain our outlook for the year where we are looking to attend to a 20% growth.
Thanks a lot. Once again, I would like to remind everyone that if you want to ask a question, press star on the telephone key. It seems like we don't have any questions now, and I would like to turn the call over to Gubra for the closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for listening in on this Q1 update from Gubra. We are looking forward to reconnecting again once we have the next quarterly update. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. That concludes today's call. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day ahead.