Eli Lilly And Novo Nordisk Prepare to convey their rivalry to the next border of weight loss drugs: pills.
The two companies expect to launch oral obesity drugs in the United States next year, once regulators have approved them. Daily pills could present more people at GLP-1, the medical class which is best known for weekly photos.
But after the Lilly pill produced less weight loss than analysts expected only during a recent test in late stages, it raised new questions on the wide time that oral drugs will be adopted and which rival company will dominate the space.
Doctors will have more closely comparing it for pills from Lilly and Novo in the coming months when Lilly publishes the results of a tête-à-tête of the two, said scientific director of Lilly, Dan Skovronsky, in an exclusive interview with CNBC. The main objective of the study is to measure how much pills can reduce blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes, but it will also assess weight loss.
“We would not have undertaken this trial of randomized phase three tête-à-tête control unless we have a lot of confidence that OrForglipron would be well compared to the oral semaglutide,” said Skovronsky.
Nikos Pekiaridis | Nurphoto | Getty images
He warned against the manufacture of comparisons between trials that do not directly compare drugs, where the Novo pill seems more effective and has led to less stop. Meanwhile, Novo’s scientific director Martin Holst Lange, in a separate interview, said the data talked about themselves.
The next Novo’s obesity pill is an oral version of its Wegovy weekly shot; The Lilly pill is a new medication called Orforglipron different from its Zepbound shot. Lilly’s shot is the gold stallion in terms of efficiency, said Skovronsky. This can help people lose more than 20% of their body weight.
Neither the Novo pill nor Lilly’s oral drug is as effective as Zepbound. In the highest dose, Orforglipron produced around 12% weight loss, while oral semaglutide led to around 17%. This raises the question of how many people will opt for a pill if it means less weight loss.
Despite this, Wall Street expects the pills to make major breakthroughs in the years to come. Analysts see oral drugs representing approximately 20% of the estimated market of $ 80 billion for GLP-1 obesity drugs in 2030, according to Evaluate data.
The logos of the Danish medication manufacturer Novo Nordisk, manufacturer of the diabetes blockbuster and weight loss treatments Ozempic and Wegovy are seen outside the construction of Theri Car the company presents the annual report of Novo Nordisk in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, on February 5, 2025.
Mads Claus Rasmussen | AFP | Getty images
Skovronsky thinks that the pills could possibly become the main way in which obesity is treated in the world, and that oral drugs could have a larger market share than injectable. He said most patients are more concerned with other factors such as supply and convenience than the weight they can lose, and he thinks Orforglipron has the advantage.
Treatment is a drug with small molecules like most of the pills that people know. It can be made more easily than peptides, such as Novo shots and pill. And it does not come with the food and water restrictions that accompany the oral option of Novo, which forces people to wait 30 minutes after taking the medication to eat and drink.
“When I look at the pills, or Forglipron has no food effect, it is a small molecule, so manufacturing should be easier,” said Evan Seigerman, BMO capital market analyst. “But with a new direction at Novo Nordisk, I think that (the new managing director) Mike Doustdar will not simply take this and be complacent on this subject. He will look and make sure that launch succeeds.”
After seeing the results of the Lilly obesity pill test, Seigerman has moved part of his estimate from Orforglipron market share to oral semaglutide. Analysts reduced their estimates by 2032 for Orforglipron on average by around $ 4.5 billion between May and September, according to Evaluate. They now see sales of $ 14.56 billion that year.
Skovronsky said it was more difficult to predict market dynamics than science.
“We did a good job by predicting science,” he said. “We have said that we would have an oral which had safety, a tolerability and an efficiency which were similar to the GLP-1 injectable. We did it. The scientific parties took place. Let’s see how the market takes place.”
