COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Novo Nordisk’s global obesity drug rollout will be dominated by its injectable medicines while its oral version will be introduced later in higher priced markets, the company’s Chief Executive Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen said on Thursday.
Jorgensen said the oral version of semaglutide and its experimental obesity drug amycretin, which Novo is currently developing, requires large amounts of active pharmaceutical ingredients, making it very costly to produce.
Given the high cost, Novo’s oral formulations will be launched in markets where higher price can be tolerated.
“I think we have the opportunity of demonstrating by far the strongest efficacy compared to what we see being developed,” Jorgensen said at Novo’s capital markets day.
“It’s not a technology that lends itself for dominating global rollout, that will have to be injectable,” he added.
Fruergaard did not specify when Novo would launch its once-daily 50 milligram semaglutide pill.
Novo Nordisk in June said a late-stage trial found that a high-dose oral version of its drug semaglutide helped overweight or obese adults lose 15% of their body weight.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick, writing by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Elaine Hardcastle)
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