Good afternoon! All eyes are on Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly again as Wall Street looks for signs that they’ll address one in every of the most important hurdles they faced last 12 months. Neither company has enough supply to fulfill the insatiable demand for his or her weight reduction and diabetes drugs.
One month into 2024, the 2 drugmakers still have not fully resolved those supply issues. They do not expect to soon. Still, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk look like making some encouraging progress.
Eli Lilly achieved its goal of doubling its capability for producing injectable incretin drugs by the tip of 2023, the corporate’s Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi said during an earnings call Tuesday. Incretin drugs, corresponding to Eli Lilly’s weight reduction treatment Zepbound and diabetes injection Mounjaro, mimic hormones produced within the gut that suppress an individual’s appetite and regulate blood sugar.
Ashkenazi added that Eli Lilly will try to extend capability with “equal urgency” this 12 months. The corporate expects essentially the most significant production increases to occur within the second half of 2024.
By that time within the 12 months, Eli Lilly expects its production of sellable doses of incretin drugs to be not less than 1.5 times the production of those doses within the second half of last 12 months, Ashkenazi added.
Amongst the corporate’s efforts to expand production is its latest manufacturing facility in North Carolina. Ashkenazi said that the plant will start producing incretin drugs as early as the tip of 2024, with products available to ship in 2025.
The corporate still expects demand for incretin drugs to outstrip supply this 12 months as it really works to extend production, Ashkenazi noted.
Eli Lilly wasn’t the one weight reduction drug producer to see positive supply developments within the last week. Novo Nordisk did, as well.
Novo Holdings, which owns almost 77% of the voting shares in Novo Nordisk, said Monday it should acquire drug manufacturer Catalent in a $16.5 billion deal.
Catalent is critical to Novo Nordisk since it’s the fundamental supplier of fill-finish work, which involves filling and packaging syringes and injection pens, for Wegovy.
Novo Nordisk will then buy three of Catalent’s manufacturing plants from Novo Holdings for $11 billion. Novo Nordisk said that purchase will step by step increase its filling capability starting in 2026.
“Overall, we expect this can further unlock supply, which is the important thing bottleneck for this market,” Yuri Khodjamirian, chief investment officer at Tema ETFs, told CNBC in response to the Catalent deals Monday. Tema in November launched an ETF whose key holdings include firms benefiting from the hype around weight reduction drugs.
The deal also means Novo Nordisk can higher control the standard of Wegovy supply, which has previously been a problem at Catalent’s facilities, Khodjamirian added.
For instance, Catalent’s factory in Brussels that fills Wegovy injection pens suffered several lapses lately and needed to shut down twice, Reuters reported in July, citing FDA inspection documents.
The deal comes as Novo Nordisk tries to make broader strides toward improving supply this 12 months.
Last week, the Danish drugmaker also said it had greater than doubled its supply of lower-dose versions of its weight reduction injection Wegovy in January in comparison with previous months. Supply shortages forced Novo Nordisk to limit the supply of those lower doses within the U.S. since May.
But why are those lower doses essential? It’s because persons are purported to start Wegovy at a low dose and step by step increase the dimensions over time to mitigate unwanted effects corresponding to nausea. So, more of those low “starter” doses means more latest patients can begin treatment with Wegovy.
The corporate plans to “step by step” increase the general supply of Wegovy throughout the remaining of the 12 months, executives added on the corporate’s fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
The most recent in health-care technology
The brain as the following frontier
The implantable neurotechnology field is heating up.
Last week, Elon Musk announced that his startup Neuralink implanted its brain-computer interface right into a human patient for the primary time. Musk said the recipient is “recovering well,” in line with a post on his social media site X, however the famously secretive neurotech company didn’t share some other details publicly.
Neuralink is developing a brain implant, called a brain-computer interface, or a BCI, designed to assist patients with paralysis control external technologies using only their mind. It seems like something out of a science fiction movie, but several firms like Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, Paradromics and Blackrock Neurotech have developed systems with these capabilities.
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer,” Musk wrote. “That’s the goal.”
Musk’s announcement marks a significant milestone for Neuralink, nevertheless it’s not unexpected. Neuralink began recruiting patients for its first in-human clinical trial in the autumn after it received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct the study in May, in line with an organization blog post.
The road to market is long for medical device firms. Neuralink can have to perform more trials that prove the security and efficacy of its BCI before it may possibly clinch the ultimate stamp of approval from regulators.
Many competing BCI firms like Synchron are also working toward bringing products to market. On Thursday, Synchron announced it has acquired a minority equity stake within the German manufacturer Acquandas, which is able to help the corporate ramp up production of its flagship BCI to organize for industrial demand.
Synchron’s stent-like BCI is delivered to the brain via the patient’s blood vessels. The corporate has implanted six patients within the U.S. and 4 patients in Australia to date.
“There are tens of millions of individuals with paralysis who we expect are in need of this technology, and we’re preparing to provide in high volumes,” Synchron CEO Tom Oxley told CNBC in an interview.
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