Between the Danish Novo Nordisk and the American Lilly, the battle for anti-obesity drugs is accelerating. The Indianapolis laboratory won, in November 2023, the green light in the United States for the marketing of its weight loss treatment, Zepbound. The latter becomes the direct competitor of Wegovy (called Ozempic in its original version), Novo Nordisk’s best-seller. The pressure is mounting between the two rivals, neck and neck in the fray.
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This is not the first time the duo has faced off. A century ago, the arrival of insulin, a revolution in the treatment of diabetes, had already opened a front line between the manufacturers. A hundred years later, the diabetes windfall continues to make their fortune, but it is on another terrain, that of obesity, that the two groups are intensifying their efforts thanks to a new generation of promising treatments.
First to arrive in June 2021 in the niche with Wegovy, Novo Nordisk has enjoyed a comfortable lead over its opponent. In the space of three years, the laboratory has already raked in more than 8 billion euros thanks to its treatment. A rather rare performance in the pharmaceutical sector. It only took five weeks for the Danish company’s new star to reach the level of sales that its predecessor, Saxenda, another drug indicated for weight loss marketed by Novo Nordisk since 2014, had taken four years to achieve.
Boost orders
Having only entered the race at the end of 2023, Lilly has had little trouble finding its place, given the high demand for anti-obesity drugs. Especially since it enjoys a major advantage: a greater average weight loss than its competitor. In the second quarter, Zepbound posted sales of $1.24 billion (€1.1 billion), while Novo recorded sales of DKK 11.7 billion (€1.6 billion) for its product.
But the pharmaceutical group does not intend to play second fiddle. With the aim of further boosting orders, the American announced on August 27 the launch in the United States of a bottled version of its drug, sold at half the catalog price of its pen-injector version. A tactical choice: the manufacturer intends to attract patients not covered by their mutual insurance companies, but ready to pay out of pocket, while streamlining the supply, since bottling drugs is industrially less complex than producing pen-injectors.
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