4Moving Biotech raises €12m to prove whether GLP-1 can crack osteoarthritis

The France-based clinical-stage biotech has closed a €12 million financing round to advance its lead programme, 4P004, toward a Phase 2a proof-of-concept readout in knee osteoarthritis. The funding extends the company’s runway through what it describes as a critical inflection point, where the viability of GLP-1–based disease modification in osteoarthritis will be tested in humans.

“With this closing in place, we are well equipped to reach the next value-creation milestone by delivering robust Phase 2a data and reaching a proof-of-concept inflection point,” said Luc Boblet, CEO of 4Moving Biotech.

The round was secured from private investors and family offices investing directly into 4 Moving Biotech, a subsidiary of 4P-Pharma and combines equity with loans, a structure the company says is aligned with long-term value creation. It follows a €7.6 million France 2030 i-Démo grant awarded last year and coincides with the transatlantic expansion of the INFLAM-MOTION Phase 2a study to the United States.

“With this closing in place, we are well equipped to reach the next value-creation milestone by delivering robust Phase 2a data and reaching a proof-of-concept inflection point,” said Boblet, pointing to the role of the upcoming data in shaping future development and strategic options.

Founded in 2020 as a spin-off from 4P-Pharma, 4Moving Biotech has now raised around €30 million in total, combining private capital with non-dilutive public funding.

Repurposing GLP-1 for a long-stalled therapeutic field

GLP-1 receptor agonists are best known for their role in diabetes and obesity. 4Moving Biotech is now testing whether the pathway can be repurposed to tackle one of drug development’s most persistent challenges: disease modification in osteoarthritis.

Rather than systemic administration, 4Moving Biotech is testing whether GLP-1 biology can be made relevant to osteoarthritis by acting directly in the joint, targeting local inflammation and tissue responses that systemic approaches have repeatedly failed to address.

“By acting directly in the joint, 4P004 tackles pain, inflammation, and tissue damage through GLP-1-mediated pathways,” said Professor Francis Berenbaum last year, the company’s chief medical officer. The study is designed to assess “dual efficacy: symptom relief and synovial health improvement via contrast-enhanced MRI,” with topline results expected in the second half of 2026.

A cautious field, shaped by repeated failure

The broader landscape for disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs (DMOADs) offers little room for overconfidence. A 2025 review of Phase II and III osteoarthritis trials published in Biomedicines found that while “many DMOADs have progressed to clinical trials, very few have made a significant impact, and none have been approved for clinical use.” Reviewing eleven candidates tested between 2010 and 2024, including small molecules, biologics and cell- or gene-based therapies, authors conclude that failure has been driven less by any single mechanism than by the difficulty of demonstrating truly disease-modifying benefit.

Several programmes reported statistically significant effects on either pain or joint structure, but rarely both. As the review notes, “the clinical relevance of a marginal increase in one without the other remains unclear,” warning that structural effects without symptom relief may be clinically meaningless, while pain relief without structural protection could even accelerate disease progression.

These challenges have translated into repeated industry exits. “Many companies have aborted attempts to develop new drugs for OA because of these challenges,” the authors write, describing osteoarthritis as a “complex, costly, lengthy, expensive and high-risk undertaking” with “few successful precedents for regulatory approval.”

Over the past decade, major programmes at Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AbbVie, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi have been discontinued or deprioritised after failing to deliver regulator-acceptable evidence of disease modification. In 2020, Unity Biotechnology reported phase II data showing that its senolytic candidate UBX0101, developed as a disease-modifying therapy for knee osteoarthritis, failed to deliver clinically meaningful improvements in pain or joint structure. Unity subsequently discontinued its osteoarthritis program, exited the field entirely, and has ceased operations in 2025.

Notably, the review does not include GLP-1–based approaches, underscoring how metabolic and incretin biology has so far remained largely outside the mainstream of osteoarthritis drug development.

In the coming months, 4MB will focus on executing its clinical strategy in preparation for future regulatory agency interactions and on facilitating patient access to its molecule. The Phase 2a readout will be the point at which the GLP-1 bet in osteoarthritis either earns its next chapter, or joins a long list of programmes that fell short.