According to a report, a top executive at Novo Nordisk said he is "comfortable" predicting that the Danish drugmaker will launch an experimental weight loss drug this decade that promises more effective results than its hugely popular drugs Ozempic and Wegovy.
Martin Lane, the head of research at Novo Nordisk, told Reuters on Friday that the company is poised to launch a pill version of the weight loss drug amycretin in the next 10 years.
Head of Research at Novo Nordisk Had This to Say
"I never commit to timelines but I would be very comfortable to say at the very least within this decade," Lane told the wire service.
The company hopes to develop oral and injectable forms of amycretin at the same time. It also expects amycretin and its other experimental obesity drug, sagrisema, will result in greater weight loss than Wegovy, noting that they would carry similar cardiac benefits.
Lane said that Novo Nordisk is hoping to launch them before the patents for Wegovy's active pharmaceutical ingredient, semaglutide, expire.
"The current development plan is to finalise cagrisema in both obesity and diabetes within the next two years, way before the patent expiry in Semaglutide," he told Reuters.
"We believe it will be difficult for others to scale to the level we are currently scaling for semaglutide, and that basically means that even with the patent expiry, we could still serve a lot of patients with semaglutide, and complement with even more efficacious products like Cagrisema and Amycretin."
Novo Nordisk Stock Surges
Shares of Novo Nordisk stock surged to record highs this week when the company informed investors about how a trial of amycretin showed that participants lost 13.1% of their weight after 12 weeks.
The news propelled the company to the 12th most valuable company in the world, up from 14th, and its $566 billion valuation allowed it to surpass Tesla and Visa.
At the same time, CEO Lars Fruegaard Jorgensen told the wire service that he expects more patients will continue to use Wegovy for more than a year now that supply constraints have eased.
"Now we're focusing on really making sure that if you start treatment, you can stay on treatment," he said.
