{"id":85884,"date":"2025-08-21T21:16:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T21:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/85884\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T21:16:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T21:16:12","slug":"will-oral-weight-loss-drugs-challenge-injectables-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/85884\/","title":{"rendered":"Will oral weight loss drugs challenge injectables? | Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why are companies working so hard to make oral tablet forms of diabetes and weight loss drugs that target the glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) receptor? The current injectable peptides \u2013 Novo Nordisk\u2019s Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide) and Eli Lilly\u2019s Mounjaro and Zepbound (tirzepatide) \u2013 are\u00a0incredibly successful<\/a>, with potentially even more promising peptides in the pipeline. So why the rush to replace them with pills?<\/p>\n

From the companies\u2019 point of view, there are some obvious advantages \u2013 oral small-molecule formulations tend to be cheaper and easier to manufacture and distribute than sterile injector pens. Manufacturing complexity \u2013 both in terms of making the peptide active ingredients and producing the final injectors \u2013 was a significant contributor to both Lilly and Novo\u2019s\u00a0struggles to supply surging demand<\/a>\u00a0for their products following approvals for weight loss, prompting\u00a0massive investments in manufacturing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Weight<\/p>\n

But as experts\u00a0Rachel Brazil spoke to when investigating the oral GLP-1 pipeline<\/a>\u00a0point out, it\u2019s certainly not cut-and-dried. While tablet forms are more generally familiar and accessible to most people, there are some anecdotal indications that patients looking for significant weight loss are comfortable with the injector pens, and might even prefer them. An injection feels like a more committed and \u2018medical\u2019 intervention than popping a \u2018diet pill\u2019 \u2013 a perception perhaps clouded by the baggage of decades of fake and failed weight loss treatments.<\/p>\n

Any oral drug will also need to be able to compete with peptides in terms of performance \u2013 especially as biosimilar semaglutide injectors emerge once Novo\u2019s patents begin to expire in the next few years. Early indications also suggest that oral GLP-1 agonists are unlikely to produce quite such spectacular weight loss results as the current injectables, at least in the first instance. Clinical trial results suggest average weight losses in the range of 10\u201312% of bodyweight after 18 months for oral drugs, while injectables\u2019 averages range from around 15% to over 20% in similar timeframes.<\/p>\n

The relative success of any oral drugs that eventually make it to market will therefore likely depend on a combination of price, performance, side-effect profiles and patients\u2019 comfort levels with one dosage form over another. The demand for effective weight loss treatments is huge \u2013 especially if they come with added benefits in terms of reducing cardiovascular and other associated diseases. So there is little doubt that there will be space in the market for a variety of complementary therapies. But it\u2019s not necessarily a given that an oral drug will outcompete existing injectables.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why are companies working so hard to make oral tablet forms of diabetes and weight loss drugs that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,137,490],"class_list":{"0":"post-85884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85884","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=85884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}