Drugmakers are racing to develop weight reduction pills

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Good afternoon! Several drugmakers are hurrying to capitalize on certainly one of the following major innovations coming to the booming weight reduction drug market: effective, convenient and potentially inexpensive obesity pills. 

A lot of the weight reduction and diabetes drugs available now are weekly injections, similar to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro. They’re amongst medications called GLP-1 agonists, which have skyrocketed in popularity during the last yr. 

Now these rivals and other drugmakers similar to Pfizer are hoping to develop oral weight reduction and diabetes drugs which are more convenient for patients to take and easier to fabricate at scale. That development may help alleviate the availability shortages plaguing the present injectable treatments within the U.S.

Pills are also typically cheaper than injections, nevertheless it’s unclear if that might be the case with oral obesity drugs. 

Novo Nordisk has a low-dose oral version of semaglutide, the lively ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, that costs $968.52 monthly before insurance and other rebates. The pill, marketed as Rybelsus, is approved for diabetes treatment. The present injections all have list prices of around $1,000 monthly. 

Pfizer on Thursday signaled that it stays within the running to develop an obesity pill after a string of setbacks last yr. The corporate said it’ll advance a once-daily version of its oral weight reduction drug, danuglipron, into more studies to assist discover an excellent dosage. 

Pfizer upset investors last yr after it scrapped a twice-daily version of danuglipron and a second oral obesity drug called lotiglipron. 

But Pfizer’s once-daily danuglipron remains to be in early-stage development. It is also unclear if the drug giant will commit to conducting late-stage studies on danuglipron, which it must do before it may well file for regulatory approvals. 

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are further ahead within the race. 

Eli Lilly is developing an oral GLP-1 called orforglipron, which helped patients lose as much as 14.7% of their weight after 36 weeks in a mid-stage trial, in comparison with 2.3% amongst those that took a placebo. Eli Lilly has previously said that it expects late-stage trial results on orforglipron in 2025. 

Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk last yr released phase three trial results on its highd-ose version of oral semaglutide, which is meant for weight management. The pill helped patients lose around 15% of their body weight on average after 68 weeks.

The corporate on the time said it plans to file for Food and Drug Administration approval in 2023. Novo Nordisk has not indicated whether it has done so. 

Novo Nordisk in March also touted data on one other experimental weight reduction pill called amycretin, which helped people lose 13.1% of their weight after 12 weeks in an early-stage trial. Results from a mid-stage trial usually are not expected until 2026. 

Amycretin suppresses appetite by targeting the identical gut hormone that Wegovy mimics, which is often called GLP-1. But amycretin also targets a pancreas hormone called amylin, which affects hunger.

Listed below are a few of the other drugmakers developing oral drugs for obesity, diabetes or each: 

Be at liberty to send any suggestions, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

Digital health startups within the U.S. raised $5.7 billion across 266 deals in the primary half of 2024, a report from Rock Health on Monday found. If that pace continues, deal counts and funding dollars could surpass totals from 2019 and 2023. Digital health startups raised $8.2 billion across 420 deals in 2019, and $10.7 billion across 498 deals last yr, the report said. 

The “pandemic-fueled funding cycle” from 2020 to 2022 stays hard to compete with, in keeping with Rock Health. Investors on the time were flocking to health-care firms and funding peaked at $29.2 billion in 2021.

Rock Health said that Series A activity was especially strong in the primary half of 2024, though Seed rounds and Series B checks were also popular. Seed, Series A and Series B funding made up nearly 85% of all labeled raises for the period, the report said. 

The firm calls rounds with out a public title (like Series A, as an illustration) “unlabeled rounds.” Startups will often raise unlabeled rounds to avoid taking valuation haircuts and push through difficult markets, though they often don’t stave off tough conversations endlessly. 

Rock Health said the general percentage of unlabeled digital health deals peaked at 55% within the fourth quarter of 2023, and decreased to 47% and 33% in the primary and second quarters this yr, respectively.  

“This waning could mark the start of our return to a ‘more normal’ cadence of labeled raises,” the report said.

Many Healthy Returns readers can probably guess what’s coming next: Artificial intelligence drew investors to many early-stage digital health firms in the primary half of this yr. Nearly 40% of all of the digital health firms that raised Series A rounds use AI, and 34% of the sector’s total funding went to firms that deploy the tech in some capability. 

The bottom may be thawing within the digital health IPO market, which went almost two full years without seeing any public offerings. The health-care payment software vendor Waystar and the precision medicine company Tempus AI went public in June, while the pregnancy monitoring company Nuvo went public via SPAC in May.

Rock Health said this exit activity mirrors the slight uptick in IPOs across broader markets. 

To sum up, “early-stage checks are growing, the proportion of unlabeled deals is tapering, and the digital health IPO market is showing early signs of life,” the report said. 

We’ll must see what the remainder of the yr has in store.

Be at liberty to send any suggestions, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.