Novo Nordisk Share promising results for the anti-obesity pill | Pharmaceutical industry
The value of the drug, Novo Nordisk, has increased by more than 6.5 billion pounds Sterling after research showed that its new anti-obeyity pill has caused weight loss almost as much as its Jab Wegovy, as it rushes against its American rival Eli Lilly to obtain tablet treatment on the market.
The shares of the Danish company have climbed more than 4.5% Thursday morning in the hope that it could recover lost market share against the generic versions Eli Lilly and cheaper from the GLP-1 medicines.
Actions had dropped almost 60% in the past year when sales have slowed down and Novo has issued several warnings, which prompted its new director general, Mike Doustdar, to plan 9,000 layoffs.
Novo said Thursday that a version of Pill once a day of Wegovy had suffered a loss of “significant weight” in a clinical trial, with almost one in three participants losing 20% or more weight. The side effects were similar to the injectable version.
This is the first Oral GLP-1 drug submitted to the American regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the company expects a decision on the question of whether the FDA will approve it for use by the end of the year. Production has already started on the American sites of Novo.
In an advanced 64 -week advance trial involving 307 obese or overweight adults, patients lost 16.6% of their body weight, on average.
The Danish company goes from face to face with the daily pill of Lilly’s weight loss, called Orforglipron. On Tuesday, the American drug manufacturer said that one in five people lost 20% or more over 72 weeks, in a trial of 3,127 adults. Patients lost 12.4% of their body weight on average in the highest dose.
Lilly developed Orforglipron with a compound he acquired from Japan Chugai Pharmaceutical in 2018. Eli Lilly plans to submit the pill to the regulator for approval later this year, and some analysts say that he could be accelerated by the FDA. Analysts believe that cutting -edge sales of $ 10 billion a year for the medication, the investment bank, Jefferies noting potential up to 25 billion dollars.
Matthew Weston, UBS analyst, said he saw a “clear leadership” for the Novo oral pill, providing for annual peak sales of $ 5 billion, including $ 4 billion in the United States, where 40% of people are obese. He added: “Orforglipron always presents a threat to being a more evolutionary product, and therefore a potentially reduced price. It does not require fasting of 30 minutes either, it could therefore be considered a more practical option.”
While anti-obeyer jabs, which imitate an intestinal hormone called GLP-1, have been extremely popular, they are very expensive, especially after the recent increase in prices of Lilly going up to 170% in the United Kingdom. The NHS has limited their availability to people with high clinical needs.
The versions of pills are easier to store, distribute and administer and should be cheaper, paving the way for millions of more people to lose weight at a time when obesity increases in the world.
The main problem with the development of a tablet version that the peptide in the semaglutide, the main ingredient of Wegovy, is immediately broken down into the acid environment of the stomach, but Novo added an absorption amplifier to accelerate its passage in the blood circulation.
GLP-1 Drugmakers’ actions have largely outperformed pharmaceutical companies that do not make these weight loss drugs. The investment platform Etoro said on Tuesday that a basket of Novo, Lilly, Sanofi, Teva, Teva and Hikma has increased 106% in the past five years, while a Basket by Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Abbvie and Bayer increased by 27%. Lilly shares increased almost 395% during the period, while Novo is still 69% in advance, despite its sharp decline in the past year.
