Online pharmacies and slimming clinics are cutting prices for Wegovy and Mounjaro in Britain, from Reuters.
People magazine on Unplanned ‘Ozempic Babies’ on the rise.
Bariatric surgery increased kidney transplant rates in patients with renal failure and obesity, from Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
NEWS
Amgen to focus on MariTide, an monthly injectable monoclonal antibody, rather than AMG 786, its early-stage obesity pill, from STAT News.
The peptide drug activates receptors of the GLP-1 hormone while blocking receptors of the GIP hormone.
CEO Bob Bradway is ‘…very encouraged with the results…’ of a phase 2 interim analysis, and is planning a broad Phase 3 program to study MariTide in obesity, diabetes, and obesity-related conditions.
With additional gusto, the company is already gearing up to make large amounts of the drug, initiating activities ‘…to further expand manufacturing capacity with both clinical and commercial supply in mind.’
This is big news for sure – a monthly injectable candidate would be impactful not just in terms of efficacy, but each vial produced would have four times as much impact across a population, then the weekly dosed drugs from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.
The stock market agrees – Amgen shares were up 13%.
Elaine Chen at STAT notes Eli Lilly raised its full-year guidance on Tuesday while it reported strong first-quarter sales of Zepbound, beating the predicted $2.39, up to $2.58 per share.
Zepbound, brought in $517 million in sales in the first quarter of this year, up from $389 million that analysts expected.
Its sister diabetes drug Mounjaro posted $1.8 billion in sales.
Anat Ashkenazi, Lilly’s chief financial officer, said ‘…Now that we’re four months into the year, we have greater visibility into these nodes of capacity and feel more confident…’ in terms of their supply chains.
In addition, Eli Lilly has FDA approval to sell the drugs in vials, in addition to the single-dose injectable pens, which can help speed up the manufacturing process.
In the UK and Europe, a multi-dose injectable ‘Kwikpen’ is also approved.
In addition, Dan Skovronsky, Lilly’s chief scientific officer, noted their small molecule oral GLP-2 drug, orforglipron, is more complicated and time-consuming than making other small molecule drugs.
Wow – a ton of updates both financially and clinically too.
The Wall Street Journal reports sales of Wegovy more than doubled in the first quarter, and would have been even higher had Novo Nordisk been able to produce more of the drug.
The company is making strides to fix that, having committed $6 billion to new manufacturing facilities, and agreed to acquire three sites previously owned by Catalent for $11 billion earlier this year.
On the Q1 earnings call, sales of Ozempic rose 42% on the year in the first quarter to $3.99 billion, with Wegovy at $1.35 billion.
The company raised its full-year guidance to reflect better pricing in the U.S. and continued demand.
Online pharmacies and slimming clinics are cutting prices for Wegovy and Mounjaro in Britain, from Reuters; Simple Online Pharmacy, which offers online access to doctors who can prescribe privately, reduced the price of a one-month supply from 179 to 149.
Eli Lilly ‘…charges British distributors 92 pounds excluding value-added tax for a 2.5 mg four-week starter dose…’ going up to 122 pounds for the highest 15 mg strength.
Very different to the $1,000 to $1,349 per month list price in the US – enough said!
OPINION
People magazine on Unplanned ‘Ozempic Babies’ on the rise.
We know that weight loss can increase fertility, based upon cure of polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS, that is associated with obesity and drives infertility.
So, a woman on a GLP-1 medication, following significant weight loss, is likely to resume ovulation and become fertile… causing concern as the impact of these drugs during pregnancy is unknown in humans.
A Novo Nordisk representative ‘…recommended to discontinue Wegovy in women at least 2 months before a planned pregnancy due to the long washout period for semaglutide…’ with ‘…potential risks to the fetus from exposure to semaglutide during pregnancy.’
But what happens when the pregnancy is not planned?
Ying Cheong, professor of reproductive medicine at Southampton University in the UK added ‘…the drug is known to cause pregnancy complications and abnormalities in animal studies.’
DATA
Bariatric surgery increased kidney transplant rates in patients with renal failure and obesity, from Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Sleeve gastrectomy was followed by active listing for kidney transplant for 37 out of 54 people, and 20 of 54 received kidney transplant within a median of 21 months.
In comparison, only 14 of 50 patients in the non-surgical cohort were listed, and a measly 5 patients received a kidney transplant.
I have had the privilege to undertake bariatric surgery on patients awaiting kidney transplant, and whilst the surgery is certainly of higher risk, the ability to increase kidney transplant rates three-fold is impactful to the patients, and also economically beneficial too.
Globally known obesity medicine physicians Drs. Arya Sharma and Thomas Wadden summarize the effects of semaglutide on weight-related quality of life (WRQOL) and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in journal Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism.
A greater proportion of participants treated with semaglutide 2.4 mg than with placebo reached meaningful within-person change, with beneficial effects on WRQOL and HRQOL.
The takeaway is that semaglutide treatment, by providing clinically meaningful weight loss, can improve well-being and ability to perform daily activities.
ADDITIONAL TOPICS
STAT on Novo Nordisk defends Ozempic’s price in face of Senate scrutiny.
Forbes on Wegovy Is Available Again After Shortages, FDA Says.
Randy Seeley at Michigan Medicine publishes in Cell Metabolism on Leveraging the Gut to Treat Metabolic Disease.
