Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO)<\/a> held firm and edged higher in early trading on Thursday despite the US Food and Drug Administration approving a new once-daily weight-loss pill from rival Eli Lilly that sets up a fresh phase of competition in the lucrative obesity drug market.<\/p>\nNovo stock rose 2.6% in opening deals on Thursday, suggesting investors and analysts had already priced in much of the competitive threat, with the Danish drugmaker’s shares having fallen almost 50% over the past year as rival drugs emerged to challenge the dominance of its Ozempic and Wegovy franchises.<\/p>\n
Lilly shares jumped more than 5% on Wednesday after the FDA approved orforglipron, sold under the brand name Foundayo, for weight loss in overweight or obese adults.<\/p>\n
The pill, which chief executive David Ricks described as obesity care designed for the real world, can be taken once a day without food or water restrictions and will begin shipping on 6 April through US retail pharmacies and telehealth providers.<\/p>\n
Clinical trial results show Foundayo patients lost an average of 11.1% of body weight, compared with 20.2% for Lilly’s injectable Zepbound, underscoring the continued efficacy advantage of injection-based treatments.<\/p>\n
Novo Nordisk’s own pill form of Wegovy, approved by the FDA in December, showed weight loss of approximately 14% in trials, ahead of Foundayo on that measure, while its injectable version delivered 15% weight loss.<\/p>\n
The approval intensifies a battle between the two companies that has increasingly shifted from injections toward oral formulations, which carry a lower barrier to patient uptake.<\/p>\n
Novo Nordisk’s Rybelsus was the first oral GLP-1 treatment, a class of drugs that mimic gut hormones to suppress appetite, to receive FDA approval, though for type 2 diabetes rather than weight loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novo Nordisk shares resilient as FDA approves Eli Lilly GLP-1 weight-loss pill to intensify competition Proactive uses images…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[271],"tags":[276,325,272,280],"class_list":{"0":"post-56128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-novo-nordisk","8":"tag-eli-lilly","9":"tag-fda","10":"tag-novo-nordisk","11":"tag-weight-loss"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116358308574736016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56128","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=56128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Novo Nordisk shares resilient as FDA approves Eli Lilly GLP-1 weight-loss pill to intensify competition Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n