Novo Nordisk said on Thursday that China’s drug regulator had accepted its application to sell the oral version of its GLP-1 weight-loss drug Wegovy, as the Danish drugmaker seeks to catch up with rival Eli Lilly in the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market.<\/p>\n
Novo, Lilly, Pfizer and local \u200cfirm Innovent Biologics (1801) are competing for market share with their versions of once-weekly GLP-1 weight-loss injections in China, as the country’s National Health Commission has said the rate of overweight or obese people could reach more than 65 percent by 2030.<\/p>\n
Novo and Lilly believe weight-loss pills could \u200battract patients reluctant to use injections.<\/p>\n
Novo has received early approval in the US and Britain for its Wegovy pill and launched it in the US this year. Lilly followed quickly, securing US approval in April for its oral orforglipron, also belonging to the GLP-1 class of drugs that mimic a gut hormone to curb appetite and regulate blood sugar in patients with diabetes.<\/p>\n
In China, Lilly moved first. The company said in March it submitted \u200ba marketing application for once-daily orforglipron to the Chinese regulator at \u200bthe end \u2060of 2025. It could launch in China as soon as this year, \u200ban executive at the US drugmaker has told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Novo did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours on how long China’s approval for the Wegovy pill might take.<\/p>\n
Sales of GLP-1 therapies for weight management could reach 30 billion yuan (US$4.46 billion) in the next five to seven years, up from an estimated 3 billion to 4 billion yuan at present, Yang Huang, JP Morgan’s head of China healthcare research, told Reuters recently.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novo Nordisk said on Thursday that China’s drug regulator had accepted its application to sell the oral version…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[2574,174,108,33432,4007,33431,17428,33434,33433,33435,1736,33436,135,8313,33430,1827],"class_list":["post-153709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-copenhagen","tag-breaking-news","tag-china","tag-copenhagen","tag-english-daily","tag-finance","tag-free-newspaper","tag-headlines","tag-hong-kong-media","tag-hong-kong-news","tag-hong-kong-news-media","tag-latest-news","tag-sing-tao","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-the-standard","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117166469776248715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153709","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=153709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}