By Maggie Fick and Andrew Silver<\/p>\n
BRUSSELS, June 24 (Reuters) – Eli Lilly’s orforglipron type-2 diabetes and obesity pill could launch in China as soon \u200cas later this year, an executive at the U.S. drugmaker told \u200cReuters, as rival Novo Nordisk seeks to catch up in the world’s second-largest drug market.<\/p>\n
U.S.-based Lilly and \u200bDenmark’s Novo believe weight-loss pills could attract patients who are reluctant to use injections and are racing to expand use of drugs that have transformed obesity treatment and reshaped the global pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n
Launch timing for orforglipron in China could be “anything from late \u200c2026 to early 2027,” Lilly \u2060Executive Vice President Patrik Jonsson told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Reuters was unable to reach China’s National Medical Products Administration \u2060for comment on orforglipron approval timelines.<\/p>\n
Novo has received early approval in countries including the U.S. and Britain for its own Wegovy weight-loss pill and launched it in the U.S. \u200bthis \u200byear. Lilly followed quickly, securing U.S. approval \u200bin April for its oral drug, \u200corforglipron.<\/p>\n
In China, Lilly has moved first. In March, the company said it submitted a marketing application for once-daily orforglipron to the Chinese regulator at the end of 2025.<\/p>\n
Novo Nordisk plans to seek Chinese regulatory approval for the Wegovy weight-loss pill “very soon,” CEO Mike Doustdar told reporters in Beijing last week.<\/p>\n
The rival drugs belong to \u200ca class known as GLP-1 medicines.<\/p>\n
Jonsson said that \u200bthere were no supply constraints in the country \u200bfor orforglipron and it planned \u200bto sell through existing partnerships with Chinese e-commerce and healthcare firms \u200cAlibaba and JD Health International.<\/p>\n
The market \u200bshare of weight-loss drugs \u200bin China is unclear, as firms like Innovent Biologics, Pfizer and Lilly do not disclose sales figures.<\/p>\n
Sales of GLP-1 treatments in China through major \u200be-commerce platforms Alibaba and \u200cJD.com totalled about 1.4 billion yuan ($207 million) in the first quarter, according \u200bto Jefferies.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maggie Fick; Writing and additional reporting from Andrew \u200bSilver in Shanghai; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maggie Fick and Andrew Silver BRUSSELS, June 24 (Reuters) – Eli Lilly’s orforglipron type-2 diabetes and obesity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[271],"tags":[174,276,27334,272,1442,57536,4033,10593],"class_list":["post-115210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novo-nordisk","tag-china","tag-eli-lilly","tag-national-medical-products-administration","tag-novo-nordisk","tag-obesity-treatment","tag-patrik-jonsson","tag-pill","tag-regulatory-approval"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116803908867189631","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}