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A view of the logo of Novo Nordisk at the company’s office in Bagsvaerd, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, March 8, 2024.
Tom Little | Reuters
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Healthy Returns newsletter, which brings the latest health-care news straight to your inbox. Subscribe here to receive future editions.
Novo Nordisk is taking aim at its rival, Eli Lilly, with a new obesity drug deal.
On Monday, the Danish drugmaker said it had agreed to pay up to $2 billion for the rights to an experimental drug from the Chinese pharmaceutical company United Laboratories International. The injectable treatment – UBT251 – is in early development to treat obesity, Type 2 diabetes and other conditions, so it could take several years before it enters any market.
Novo Nordisk will pay $200 million up front and milestone payments of up to $1.8 billion, along with tiered royalties. The deal gives the company exclusive rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize the drug globally, but not in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Novo Nordisk joins a slate of other pharmaceutical giants, such as Merck and AstraZeneca, that have recently inked relatively cheap deals with Chinese biotech companies for obesity drugs.
“While Trump tariffs and trade war talks continue on, we find it worthy of note that pharma continues to look to Chinese biotech names as a source for cheap early licensing agreements where large pharma can explore the potential of novel mechanisms with limited upfront investment,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman said in a note on Monday.
So, what’s different about the new drug?
It takes a three-pronged approach to promoting weight loss and regulating blood sugar. Most commercially available obesity treatments target only one or two gut hormones to produce those effects.
Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster obesity injection Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic activate GLP-1. Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro target both GLP-1 and another gut hormone called GIP.
Researchers say that activating a third gut hormone, in principle, could have a more potent effect on a person’s appetite and satisfaction, leading to greater weight loss and added health benefits.
That’s exactly what UBT251 does, as it targets GLP-1, GIP and another gut hormone called glucagon.
“The addition of a candidate targeting glucagon, as well as GLP-1 and GIP, will add important optionality to our clinical pipeline, as we look to develop a broad portfolio of differentiated treatment options that cater to the diverse needs of people living with these highly prevalent diseases,” Martin Holst Lange, executive vice president for development at Novo Nordisk, said in a release on Monday.
Here’s what Eli Lilly has to do with all of this.
Novo Nordisk’s newly acquired drug is a clear potential competitor to Eli Lilly’s so-called “Triple G” obesity drug retatrutide.
The experimental injection targets the same gut hormones as UBT251, and has shown even greater weight loss than Eli Lilly’s existing drugs in mid-stage trials.
Retatrutide helped patients lose 24.2% of their body weight, or 58 pounds, on average after 48 weeks in a mid-stage trial of adults who were obese or overweight. Those who took the placebo lost 2.1% of their body weight after that same time period.
Eli Lilly expects to release results from a 68-week late-stage study in people with obesity and osteoarthritis of the knee in 2025 – one of at least nine closely watched clinical trials on retatrutide.
That means Eli Lilly’s drug could enter the market years ahead of Novo Nordisk’s treatment.
Still, Seigerman noted that UBT251’s data from a phase one trial in China on 36 patients is “impressive.”
The highest dose of the weekly injection helped patients lose 15.1% of their weight on average after 12 weeks, compared to average weight loss of 1.5% in patients who took a placebo, according to Novo Nordisk’s release.
The drug’s safety data was consistent with other gut-hormone targeting therapies. The most common side effects were gastrointestinal and the majority were mild to moderate in severity.
“While results are early, we view these signs of efficacy as promising and potentially competitive,” Seigerman said.
He added that the new deal may reflect Novo Nordisk’s efforts to reposition itself following underwhelming late-stage data on its other experimental obesity drug called CagriSema. It is a combination of cagrilintide — a nascent form of weight loss treatment known as an amylin analog — and semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic.
Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.
Latest in health-care tech: Doctors seeing benefits from AI, but feel pessimistic about the future of the U.S. health-care system, survey finds
Things are looking up for doctors in the U.S. – at least a little bit.
Physicians are generally feeling better about their profession than they have in recent years, according to a new survey commissioned by the health-care software vendor Athenahealth. The number of doctors who thought about leaving the profession on a weekly basis declined 22% from last year.
That’s at least in part because artificial intelligence has helped alleviate some of their administrative responsibilities, the survey said. Only around 27% of physicians believe AI is overhyped, compared to 40% of respondents surveyed last year.
Even so, most doctors still have broader concerns. Only about 30% of respondents said they feel optimistic about the general direction of the U.S. health-care system.
Athenahealth partnered with The Harris Poll to conduct the survey, called the Physician Sentiment Survey. It polled 750 primary care physicians and 251 specialists across the U.S. between Jan. 2 and Jan. 15. Only 6% of respondents use Athenahealth’s electronic health record software.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, around half of the physicians who are already using AI in their practices said transcription services and capabilities are currently the most valuable use case for the technology. AI tools that can automatically generate documentation like clinical notes have exploded in popularity over the last year.
But doctors still aren’t completely sold on AI.
More than 60% of respondents said they are worried that the tech could lead to loss of human touch. Similarly, 58% of physicians surveyed said they are concerned about overreliance on AI for diagnoses, and 53% said they are worried about the risk of improper diagnosis.
Doctors are also concerned about demanding regulatory requirements, the lack of data-sharing between systems and the financial health of their organizations. And while 61% of respondents said they believe patient portals help improve the quality of care, 83% of physicians surveyed said they add to their administrative workload.
So, small steps toward progress? The survey suggests AI helped improve physician sentiment last year, but it was not a silver bullet.
As AI continues to mature, we’ll be watching closely to determine where it is, and is not, making a real difference in health care.
Read more about the survey findings here.
Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.
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