October 3, 2024 — Late yesterday, FDA announced that Lilly’s tirzepatide shortage is officially over. Both Mounjaro and Zepbound are fully available in all marketed strengths and dosage forms. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined the shortage of tirzepatide injection, a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) medication, has been resolved. Tirzepatide injection has been in shortage since 2022 […]
July 27, 2024 — It’s been a rough month for investors in Lilly and Novo Nordisk – largely because of the prospects for rising competition to their wildly successful obesity medicines. Accelerating VK2735 This week, Viking Therapeutics announced they are accelerating development of injectable form of VK2735, a dual agonist that works on both GLP-1 and GIP receptors. This […]
July 13, 2024 — Barely seven months ago, business reporters were telling us Pfizer had decided to “drop,” “stop,” “can,” or “pull the plug” on danuglipron – an oral small molecule for obesity. But as we pointed out at the time, they missed the real story. Pfizer was shifting its gears to focus on a once daily form of […]
June 25, 2024 — It’s over. The 84th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association came to an end yesterday and for anyone interested in obesity, it has given us a lot to absorb. After four days with a steady stream of new information about drugs like the GLP-1 agonists that regulate appetite and adiposity, we are left wondering. […]
April 4, 2024 — We have much to learn from a recent crisis of escalating insulin prices. This is the bottom line of a new paper in Diabetes Care. In short, multifaceted public policy action eased that crisis. So it has important implications for issues with anticompetitive pricing of diabetes and obesity medicines broadly. Anticompetitive Pricing Practices Authors Kathryn […]
March 28, 2024 — A new economic analysis in JAMA Network Open brings unsurprising news: manufacturing costs for GLP-1 agonists are a tiny fraction of the price for these important medicines. This is always the case for innovative prescription drugs that must recover billions of dollars of development costs in order to be profitable. The response from policy makers […]
February 9, 2024 — Are patent thickets boosting the prices of obesity medicine prices and putting these important medical advances out of reach for everyone but the wealthy and well insured? A new paper in JAMA this week suggests this is true – at least in part. Rasha Alhiary and colleagues explain: “Manufacturers have secured long periods of market […]
January 2, 2024 — The year we just finished saw quite a pivot in the science and policy we cover here. So what will we pivot toward in 2024? What will leave us cold? Here are our best educated guesses for what will be hot or not in 2024 for obesity and health. #1 Hot: Pricing Drug prices will […]
December 17, 2023 — “Are you sure you want an Ozempic pill?” In the Atlantic, Yasmin Tayag poses this question. Back in June people were bubbling with enthusiasm at the prospect of an oral small molecule – orforglipron – that might work as well as injectable semaglutide. But Tayag offers caution that we share. One size, one approach, for […]
November 9, 2023 — In an era of tremendous change for obesity care, this is certainly a huge milestone. FDA approved tirzepatide for obesity treatment yesterday and put Lilly in the position to offer serious competition to Novo Nordisk. But the question that matters most to us is simple. How will this competition help people seeking to cope with […]
