{"id":851396,"date":"2026-08-11T12:04:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T12:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851396\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T12:04:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T12:04:21","slug":"foundayo-eli-lilly-wins-u-k-approval-challenging-wegovy-weight-loss-pill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851396\/","title":{"rendered":"Foundayo: Eli Lilly wins U.K. approval, challenging Wegovy weight-loss pill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eli Lilly<\/a> has won its first approval to sell its weight-loss drug Foundayo outside the U.S., allowing it to compete with rival Novo Nordisk’s <\/a>Wegovy pill in the U.K.<\/p>\n

It marks only the second GLP-1 weight-loss pill in the European market and comes just two months after Novo launched its Wegovy pill there<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency<\/a> said Monday that orforglipron, sold as Foundayo, will be available for weight management and type 2 diabetes on prescription.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As with all new treatments, it will need to be evaluated for cost-effectiveness by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to be available through the country’s National Health Service.<\/p>\n

Novo has used its months-long lead in the oral weight-loss space to position Wegovy pill in the market as the most effective oral option for losing weight.<\/p>\n

Lilly has sought to emphasize that Foundayo can, as a small molecule medicine, be taken without any food restrictions. Wegovy must be taken first thing in the morning with a sip of water and no other food or drink for at least 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

Foundayo has seen a significantly slower uptake in the U.S. than the Wegovy pill. Lilly CEO David Ricks<\/a> told CNBC in April this was because it is a completely new medicine that needs time to establish itself with doctors and patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This contrasts with the Wegovy pill, which uses the same active ingredient, semaglutide, as its injectable versions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Eli<\/p>\n

Foundayo launched in the U.S. in April and generated $98 million in sales for the second quarter.<\/p>\n

Both companies say that weight-loss pills are expanding the market, rather than being bought only by people who’d already used the more expensive injectables.<\/p>\n

“I could see a future where actually this market is, to a large extent, a pill market,” Novo CEO Mike Doustdar told CNBC<\/a> this month, while stressing it was still early days for Wegovy pill.<\/p>\n

He pushed back on concerns that momentum was slowing after oral Wegovy sales came in slightly below some analyst forecasts in the second quarter.<\/p>\n

\"Novo<\/p>\n

He also said that in the first three weeks the Wegovy pill was available in the U.K., around 300,000 patients were estimated to have started taking the pill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Lilly has won its first approval to sell its weight-loss drug Foundayo outside the U.S., allowing it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,507,99,174,397329,42787,416664,510,137,508,500,53128,490,511,4334,52288,1055],"class_list":["post-851396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-biotech-and-pharmaceuticals","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-consumer-staples-select-sector-spdr-fund","tag-david-a-ricks","tag-defiance-daily-target-2x-long-lly-etf","tag-eli-lilly-and-co","tag-health","tag-health-care-industry","tag-healthcare","tag-ishares-biotechnology-etf","tag-medication","tag-novo-nordisk-a-s","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-spdr-sp-biotech-etf","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}