Excerpts from an FT article on Weight loss. Wegovy (semaglutide) the weight loss drug and similar others ( Tirzepatide )which work as “glucagon like peptide 1 agonists” are gaining traction and facing supply issues. Neuland confirmed in their concall that they are developing both Semaglutide and Tirzepatide.
FT article :
When Novo Nordisk launched weight loss drug Wegovy last year, it recruited US rapper and actress Queen Latifah to front a publicity campaign aimed at tackling the stigma that often surrounds obesity treatments.
A year on, and the Danish company has become a victim of its success. Surging demand and manufacturing constraints have caused widespread shortages of Wegovy, a drug which — in a late stage clinical trial — produced an average weight loss in patients of 15 per cent of their body weight.
Scarcity of the drug, which has the generic name semaglutide and is an appetite suppressant, has forced Novo to suspend marketing and rethink its manufacturing strategy.
It has also provided an opportunity for Eli Lilly, Amgen and several biotech companies developing similar obesity-busting drugs to try to catch up in a market that analysts forecast could be worth $50bn a year by 2030.
A four-week course of Wegovy has a list price of $1,349 a month, although patients with insurance that cover the drug pay less. Given that patients must stay on the drugs for life to ensure they do not put weight back on, obesity medications should generate stable income over long periods for drugmakers, say analysts.
Morgan Stanley forecasts that Novo Nordisk and Lilly will capture about 40 per cent of the market, as they develop and launch up to a dozen obesity medicines. Several other biotech companies — Amgen, Altimmune, Zealand Pharma, Hanmi, Regor therapeutics, Sciwind Biosciences and vTv Therapeutics — are at earlier stages of drug development.
Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration granted fast-track designation to Lilly’s weight loss drug Tirzepatide, a move the company expects should lead to its approval next year. It successfully launched a formulation of this drug, which it branded Mounjaro, in May to treat type 2 diabetes at a list price of $974 for four weekly doses.
Excerpts from Neuland concall :
Midhun : Congrats for nice set of numbers. My question is regarding the peptide molecules in our pipeline, we have been developing Semaglutide and Liraglutide for past 4 years I think, can you give me more color on this? Have you filed any DMF for something or any update on this?
Sajeev E. Medikonda:
So, I think Midhun when it comes to the peptide sect we have in our portfolio and which we have been developing, you are right that we have been working on Liraglutide and Semaglutide and we have made significant progress in the lab. Even as we were looking, this is not a small molecule, so therefore we are not looking to straight away go and file a DMF because we need working very closely with a formulator to ensure that we have the right products which is their need and even as we are looking for the right customer for these two products, we have also started development on more molecules in the peptide portfolio. So, as soon as we find the right partners for these products, we will scale them up, you will see the DMF being filed. Even as we are saying that we are looking for the right partners for these products, we have gone further because we have done the work in the lab for these products, we have added more products to our portfolio and even there we are seeing good interest in those products, so I think we will find that in our product list, a product called Difelakafalin as well as Tirzepatide, both also we have been working for the past 6 months or so.
Midhun : My next question is regarding the molecule, Tirzepatide, are we seeing any demand for this molecule, how is that customer traction for this molecule?
Sanjeev E : So, this is a recently approved molecule, so we are seeing good traction, but we will be expecting certain small development quantities going out over the next 12 to 18 months or so, but from a commercial perspective this is a long-term bet both for us as well as our customers.
Apologies for a longish post. I am sure many would have analysed this opportunity. Just thought of sharing this to the community.
- I am not the person asking the question in the concall.
Invested.
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