COPENHAGEN, Denmark \u2014 Novo Nordisk has agreed to sell its blockbuster Wegovy and Ozempic drugs \u200bthrough U.S. telehealth company Hims & Hers’ platform, the Danish drugmaker said on Monday, ending a legal dispute that erupted last month.<\/p>\n
The deal marks a turnaround from February, when Novo \u200csued Hims over a $49 compounded alternative to its Wegovy weight-loss pill.<\/p>\n
Novo is grappling with telehealth firms offering cheaper compounded copycat versions \u2060of its obesity treatments.<\/p>\n
Under the agreement, effective \u200blater this month, Hims customers will gain access \u2060to U.S. regulatory-approved Ozempic and Wegovy injectables, as well as the Wegovy pill, at Novo’s self-pay \u200cprices.<\/p>\n
Novo CEO Mike Doustdar said \u200cthe Wegovy pill had generated more than 600,000 prescriptions since its launch two \u2060months ago, with telehealth partnerships accelerating uptake.<\/p>\n
Hims’ shares were up \u2060nearly 48% in premarket trading.<\/p>\n
Competition drives price cuts<\/p>\n
Novo faces stiff U.S. competition from Eli Lilly. To boost sales, Novo has cut prices for its weight-loss drugs from about $1,000 per month to $149-$299 on its websites.<\/p>\n
Doustdar said lower pricing was a key part of the partnership, telling Reuters that “authentic products are now very similarly priced as the compounded ones.”<\/p>\n
The deal follows a warning \u200clast week from U.S. regulators to 30 telehealth companies over misleading promotions \u200bof compounded drugs from the GLP-1 class that includes Wegovy and Ozempic. The Food and Drug Administration said some firms falsely equated compounded products with approved medications.<\/p>\n
Hims CEO Andrew Dudum said the partnership with Novo followed Hims’ decision to shift its U.S. weight-loss business away from compounded GLP-1 drugs and toward branded, FDA-approved treatments, reflecting what he said was rising demand for a wider range of lower-cost options.<\/p>\n
“That’s where we see growth in the business,” Dudum told \u200bReuters.<\/p>\n
Novo said it was withdrawing the lawsuit “while reserving the right to refile.”<\/p>\n
Hims will no longer advertise compounded GLP-1 \u200cdrugs, though it \u200cwill continue offering \u2060them when providers deem it clinically necessary.<\/p>\n
“Glad to see HIMS will stop advertising unapproved compounded drugs and instead sell FDA-approved products through its new partnership with Novo Nordisk. Importantly, they will keep them affordable (no increase in price) and limit compounded GLP-1s for rare (FDA compliant) cases,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary wrote in \u200ca social media post.<\/p>\n
Novo ended \u200ba similar agreement last year over concerns about compounded \u200cdrug marketing and sales.<\/p>\n
Contributing: Sriparna Roy<\/p>\n
\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COPENHAGEN, Denmark \u2014 Novo Nordisk has agreed to sell its blockbuster Wegovy and Ozempic drugs \u200bthrough U.S. telehealth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[271],"tags":[438,1298,6402,4007,393,6403,1343,33,38,272,6127,6404,4347,135,2410,5423,6405,1646],"class_list":["post-36407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novo-nordisk","tag-business","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-finance","tag-health","tag-homes","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-novo-nordisk","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-science","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116201454629421404","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36407","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=36407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}