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We are advancing closer to having the first medicine to lose weight without needles.
That is thanks to Novo Nordiskthat awaits a US approval for your daily pill for chronic weight control by the end of this year. The company expects to launch it in early 2026.
The drug is the oral version of 25 milligrams of Semaglutide, the active ingredient in the popular weight loss injection of the Danish drug manufacturer Diabetes counterpart Mounjaro.
Several drug manufacturers, including the main rival of Novo Nordisk Eli LillyThey have been running to develop obesity pills, which can help relieve supply deficit and problems accessing injections in the market. It is likely that pills will be easier to manufacture than injections, and some health experts expect them to be cheaper.
It can be too early to say what pill most of the market will win. But one thing is clear: Novo Nordisk's drug will have an advantage.
The Executive Vice President of Research and Development of Novo Nordisk and the scientific director, Martin Holst Lange, sat with CNBC to obtain a preview of the company's pill.
About the advantages of the pill:
Lange promoted the profile of weight loss, safety and tolerability “without equal” of the pill.
The pill helped patients lose up to 16.6% of their weight on average at 64 weeks, according to the results of a late stage in a medical conference in 2024. That weight loss was 13.6% when the company analyzed all patients, regardless of whether they stopped the medication.
Weight loss seems to be in line with the injectable version of Semaglutide (Wegovy), and slightly larger than that caused by an experimental pill of Eli Lilly in a separate three phase test.
“I think the data speak a bit for themselves,” said Lange.
Later, Lange said that some of the company's competitors expect their pills to be less effective than their injectable drugs, but “that clearly is not the case” for Novo Nordisk.
He also pointed out the “substantially lower” rates of patients who suspended treatment due to side effects, compared to competition medications. But Lange said that he takes comparisons “with a grain of salt” since there is no face -to -face tests directly face the novo Nordisk pill against other drugs.
About 6.9% of patients suspended oral semaglutid due to side effects, which were mainly gastrointestinal, compared to around 5.9% of those who took a placebo.
Meanwhile, 10.3% of the patients who took the highest dose of Eli Lilly's pill stopped treatment due to side effects, compared to around 2.6% of people in a placebo group.
Lange also said that Novo Nordisk's pill could have a cardiovascular health benefit. This is due to the fact that the semaglutida, particularly full of weeds, is the only injection into the market with a established and approved cardiovascular benefit.
Novo Nordisk said last week, Wagovy reduced the risk of heart attack, stroke or death in 57% versus injection of Eli Lilly weight loss in a comparison of the real world of rival medications in patients with obesity and cardiovascular diseases, but not diabetes.
In a separate three phase trial called “soul”, the oral semagglutida of Novo Nordisk reduced the risk of death, heart attack and cardiovascular strokes in 14% compared to a placebo after four years on average in patients with diabetes and established heart disease, with or without chronic renal disease.
On the dietary requirements of the pill:
Novo Nordisk's pill is a peptide medication, while competitors such as Eli Lilly's treatment are small molecule drugs.
That means that patients should take the oral semaglutida of Novo Nordisk in the morning with an empty stomach with no more than four ounces of current water. They are told to wait 30 minutes before eating, drinking or taking other oral medications. Some analysts previously told CNBC that these dietary requirements could be an obstacle to certain patients.
But Lange called him “a theoretical concern” and pointed out the evidence that shows that “it is not a true limitation.” For example, he said that patients were treated with the pill for up to five years in the soul test controlled with placebo and “even in that environment, we did not see this as a limitation.”
“Patients take that medication apparently without this limiting their life,” said Lange. “I think it's a matter of, you get up in the morning, you take the tablet, then, usually, show you, you will have breakfast and then, very fast, it has left half an hour.”
On how the pills will fit the obesity market:
Lange said that injections do not seem to be “an important obstacle” For people who take obesity treatments, but recognized that there are some patients who do not like needles or who have other reasons not to want an injectable medication.
Novo Nordisk wants to be able to reach those people.
“If there is a large group of people who prefer an oral about an injectable, we want to deliver that,” he said. “We prefer to deliver that, again, with the same effectiveness and security profile.”
He said that he can also imagine patients who begin in an injectable and change to another form of treatment to maintain their results: “You can change to an oral, it could change to a lower dose, something that gives less [gastrointestinal side effects]”
Lange said that the ability to make the transition to different treatments should be tested in a phase three trial, but “based on what we have seen so far, it is that optional in our portfolio.”
He highlighted other oral and injectable drugs in the Novo Nordisk pipe, including Amycretina. This treatment is directed to the same intestinal hormone as bad imitations mimic, known as LPG-1, as well as a pancreatic hormone called amiline that affects hunger. Tardly stage tests on Amycretina will begin next year, Lange said.
On the demand meeting with the supply:
In recent years, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly injections fell into a shortage of supply due to the demand. These treatments are no longer scarce, and Wall Street and the medical and health community expect the pills not to find the same problem.
Lange said that producing enough drug to meet demand is “obviously key to us”, since Novo Nordisk wants to ensure that patients can continue their treatment. He said the company is confident to expand the manufacture of treatment.
Lange pointed out the company's investments to increase production capacity in recent years. That includes a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina and an agreement to buy three Catalant manufacturing sites of the Matrix company of Novo Nordisk, Novo Holdings.
Lange said that these investments will help with the supply of injectables, but “it certainly also goes to oral active ingredients that are really taking place in the United States”
Do not hesitate to send any advice, suggestion, stories ideas and data to Annika in [email protected].
OpenAi is doubling On the innovation of medical care.
In a publication about LinkedIn on Tuesday, Openai's product director Kevin Weil announced that he is creating a new initiative within the company called “OpenAi for Science.” The artificial intelligence company will hire a small team of academics to build “a platform with AI that accelerates scientific discovery,” Weil said.
“Based with a small team of researchers, we want to demonstrate that AI models are ready to accelerate fundamental science and accelerate research worldwide,” Weil wrote.
Operai for Science will not work exclusively in medical care, but Weil shared several examples of how AI has been used to accelerate biological and health -related research in recent months. He mentioned the Google Deepmind Alfafold, which predicts the structure in which proteins folds, as well as OpenAi's work with retro biosciences, among other examples.
“The scientific discovery improves everything, from the quality of our daily life to national security to world GDP,” Weil said in the position. “Innovation is the reason why the United States leads the world. Few domains are as many promises to improve lives as science.”
The new scientific initiative occurs after Openai promoted GPT-5 as the “best model” for health-related consultations. GPT-5, which was implemented last month, is Openai's latest large-scale AI model.
The OpenAi CEO, Sam Altman, said that a publication about the health -related questions of X is one of the best categories of use for its chatpt chatbot.
GPT-5 is designed to mark health concerns proactively, ask relevant questions and generate more precise and reliable answers, Openai said in a blog post. Altman said in his publication X that he hopes that GPT-5 health capacities “provide real service to people.”
“Medical care is perhaps the area where there is the greatest improvement of any category,” Altman told “CNBC's Squawk Box” in an interview last month.
Do not hesitate to send any advice, suggestion, stories ideas and data to Ashley at [email protected].
