Posts Tagged ‘competition’

Novo Nordisk pushed out a press release this week in the spirit of “My Dog’s Better Than Your Dog.” The gist of it was to claim that Novo’s Wegovy (semaglutide) tablets are best in comparison to the newly approved Foundayo (orforglipron) tablets for obesity treatment. The basis for the claim? A “simulated treatment comparison” soon […]

“It’s just a tablet,” say the scoffers. Why are so many close observers of obesity care expressing such enthusiasm for approval of the first non-peptide GLP-1 oral tablet – the Foundayo brand of orforglipron from Lilly? Well actually, as one of those observers, we can think of a number of reasons to expect the Foundayo […]

It would be hard to find a sharper contrast than the one displayed yesterday in the report of fourth quarter 2025 business results for Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Lilly is enjoying the best of times. Novo is suffering the worst. “Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 growth is only getting started,” says CNBC, “as Novo Nordisk braces […]

Yesterday, Roche announced topline results from a phase two study of a new injectable dual agonist medicine for obesity. The drug, CT-388, delivered a reduction in body weight of 22.5% after 48 weeks at the highest dose tested (24 mg). Placebo-subtracted weight loss was 18.3% and at 48 weeks, patients taking the drug were still […]

This is a perilous and exciting time for investing in obesity innovation as the market for treating this disease advances dramatically. On the side of excitement, we note that the David Wainer in the Wall Street Journal predicts that “obesity drugs are about to go mass market.” Perilous for Novo On the side of peril, […]

Yesterday’s news from the business of developing and selling obesity medicines reveals a lot. Lilly told us tirzepatide is now the biggest-selling drug of any kind in the world and Novo Nordisk started a highly unusual bidding war with Pfizer for Metsera. Metsera is a biotech startup focused on obesity medicines. Booming Tirzepatide Lilly announced […]

The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Right now, it seems that Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that was first to commit and break through with a major advance in obesity is now falling behind Eli Lilly and Company. This is a story of risk, reward, and caution in the competition […]

This is quite a day for the folks who have invested energy and others who have invested a great deal of money into developing tirzepatide for obesity. They took the risk of doing a head-to-head study of this drug against semaglutide and it clearly paid off. In the SURMOUNT-5 study, tirzepatide came out ahead on […]

The word of the day in obesity is volatility. Minutes ago in Denmark, Novo Nordisk announced their first quarter business results and revealed a 13% drop in obesity drug sales, a reduction in their sales forecast, and yet the response in European stock markets was that the stock rose in value. In fact, it rose […]

Novo Nordisk went shopping this week and brought home a super-early-phase triple-G agonist for the low low price of $200 million in cash up front. On top of that, Novo will pay another $1.8 billion plus royalties if all goes well. That’s a tidy sum to pay for rights to a drug – UBT251 – […]