Dive Brief:
- In light of payer pressures in the marketplace and increased competition, diabetes drugmaker Novo Nordisk A/S is making a concerted push into obesity.
- While the Danish drugmaker already has one therapy in the space, CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen wants to change the conversation around how obesity is defined and have the condition classified as a chronic disease.
- Novo Nordisk said Tuesday it will begin a Phase 3 program testing its subcutaneous GLP-1 antagonist semaglutide in obesity, with plans to enroll 4,500 patients. The company will also begin a 12,500-patient cardiovascular outcomes study of semaglutide in obesity.
Dive Insight:
Novo Nordisk has struggled to maintain growth in recent years as the diabetes market becomes more competitive and pricing pressures ratchet up in the insulin space.
That pressure has put more focus on Novo's GLP-1 drugs and is now pushing the company to shift resources toward obesity drug development.
Novo Nordisk's market-leading Victoza (liraglutide), for example, is also marketed for obesity under the brand name Saxenda, but sales in that indication are dwarfed by the more than $3 billion in the drug's annual sales for diabetes treatment.
Despite the growing number of obese people around the world — particularly in the U.S. — obesity is not an easy market to crack. In the past, other drugmakers tried to bring novel obesity treatments to market, but those products have largely flopped commercially. Most of the drugs aren't very effective — only reducing weight by about 5% — and come with a swath of uncomfortable side effects.
All of these drugs have also faced an uphill market. Many doctors are reluctant to prescribe drugs to treat obesity, preferring instead to tell patients to diet and exercise.
Regardless of how effective any treatments Novo is able to development, the company will have to overcome the stigma of using drugs to treat obesity and change the thinking around the condition in order to have patients and physicians consider obesity a chronic disease.
Novo currently has six programs in early-to-mid clinical development that either target appetite reduction, energy expenditure or both.
Semaglutide will be the largest near-term opportunity. The once-weekly GLP-1 will be tested in a variety of different obesity patients across a variety of settings in four 68-week studies that are expected to read out by 2020.