Oral Wegovy for Weight Loss is on the Way
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted Novo Nordisk’s (NOVOb.CO), marketing application for an oral version of its weight-loss drug Wegovy and will decide in the fourth quarter, the Danish drugmaker said on Friday.
The company’s experimental once-daily version will become the first oral GLP-1 for chronic weight management, if approved. U.S.-listed shares of Novo added to session gains and were last up 5.72% at $69.36 following the news.
Novo Nordisk’s oral GLP-1 drug Rybelsus, which also has the same active ingredient semaglutide, is already approved for blood sugar control in adults with diabetes. Novo, Eli Lilly (LLY.N), and several drug developers are racing to introduce oral weight-loss pills as an easy-to-use treatment in a market dominated by injections, encouraged by estimates that obesity treatment sales could hit $150 billion in the coming years.
Excerpted from Reuters
