BREAKINGVIEWS-Obesity pills are shaky hail Mary for Novo Nordisk
Novo Nordisk has launched an oral weight loss pill, Wegovy, in the U.S., competing with Eli Lilly's injectable options. The company anticipates that oral drugs could capture over a third of the GLP-1 market by 2030, reflecting a shift towards consumer preferences in obesity treatment. The pill is priced at $149 per month, but success may depend on patients accepting similar side effects as injectables, despite potentially modest benefits.
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
By Aimee Donnellan
DUBLIN, Jan 13 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The $266 bln group has beaten arch-rival Eli Lilly in bringing an oral weight loss remedy to market. Tablets may appeal to patients wary of the traditional jabs where the US giant dominates. Success will require patients to swallow similar side effects, with more modest benefits.
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CONTEXT NEWS
Oral weight-loss drugs could account for a third or more of the overall GLP-1 market by 2030, a Novo Nordisk executive said on January 12.
“In our first assumption, injectables dominated the market and pills played a smaller role,” Ludovic Helfgott, Novo Nordisk’s executive vice president for product and portfolio strategy, told Reuters at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference.
“We believe that the pill could actually represent up to a third-plus of that market overall as we go,” he added.
Helfgott said Novo’s updated view reflects a better understanding of behaviour in what he described as an increasingly consumer-driven obesity market, where many patients pay out of pocket.
Novo Nordisk launched a daily oral version of Wegovy in the U.S. earlier in January with a starting cash price of $149 per month. (Editing by Neil Unmack; Production by Shrabani Chakraborty)
