JOHANNESBURG, July 20 – South Africa\u2019s Aspen Pharmacare said on Monday that its Canadian subsidiary had received regulatory approval from Health Canada for Aspen-Semaglutide, a generic version of Novo Nordisk\u2019s blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic.<\/p>\n
Africa\u2019s biggest pharmaceutical company said in a statement that its generic semaglutide is authorized for the management of type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n
The expiry of Novo\u2019s patent for semaglutide, the active ingredient in the Danish drugmaker\u2019s blockbuster GLP-1 drugs Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss, has opened the door for several drugmakers looking to enter the Canadian market with generic versions, which are essentially copies of branded drugs.<\/p>\n
The timing of Aspen\u2019s commercial launch in Canada remains dependent on the availability of semaglutide active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) supply from India\u2019s Dr. Reddy\u2019s Laboratories , the company said.<\/p>\n
An API is the key compound in a drug that produces its therapeutic effect.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Dr Reddy\u2019s said that supplies of its generic semaglutide would remain unavailable in India and face disruptions in Canada until at least late October after an impurity issue in the drug\u2019s active ingredient halted production of new batches.<\/p>\n
In March, Aspen\u2019s CEO Stephen Saad said Aspen\u2019s generics will be manufactured at its South African and French facilities, with the bigger volumes via multi-dose pens set to be produced at the South African facility.<\/p>\n
The French facility will produce single-dose autoinjector medicine.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla;Editing by Alison Williams and Susan Fenton)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JOHANNESBURG, July 20 – South Africa\u2019s Aspen Pharmacare said on Monday that its Canadian subsidiary had received regulatory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[712,49,48,44],"class_list":["post-814545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}