Lilly's Obesity Pill Will Have Far-Reaching Effect, Doctors Say

Eli Lilly & Co.'s obesity pill prompted enough weight loss in a large clinical trial to be meaningful for patients and have far-reaching implications for the field, doctors said.

The US drugmaker's tablet orforglipron achieved weight loss of 11.2% in adults with obesity and had side effects in line with the shots available today, said doctors at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes meeting in Vienna. Lilly is presenting full data from the pill's main obesity trial at the meeting and publishing it in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The tablet doesn't appear likely to prompt as much weight loss as Lilly's shot Zepbound and rival Novo Nordisk A/S's Wegovy and fell slightly short of results for the Danish company's rival pill in a separate study. Still, it will make it possible to treat many more patients, the doctors said. That's because it will be easier to produce, easier to use, and eventually, perhaps also cheaper.

"I see this changing the way we treat people with obesity," said Sean Wharton, medical director of the Wharton Medical Clinic just outside Toronto, who was one of the lead authors of the study. "What we don't have is access to care for people who desperately need it."

Oral versions of popular weight-loss shots are some of the next big things in the obesity market, which Bloomberg Intelligence estimates will reach $100 billion in annual sales by 2030. Lilly and Novo are competing to be first.

There are a few key differences between the Lilly and Novo entrants in the pill race. Novo's pill is a version of the same peptide, semaglutide, that's in the Danish drugmaker's shots. That makes it more complicated to produce and slightly more fiddly to take, with restrictions around when patients can eat and drink. Lilly's pill is what the pharmaceutical industry calls a small molecule - a simpler compound that can be made quickly and cheaply. Lilly says it can also be taken with less regard to food and drink.

Lilly's pill has had difficulty meeting the high expectations it generated. Results in diabetes were solid, but in August, the first data released from Lilly's main obesity trial fell short of investors' hopes. Some analysts cut their peak sales estimates. Later that same month, however, more data from another study in patients with both diabetes and obesity revived some hope.

Lilly said the main obesity trial also showed that the pill could improve patients' blood pressure and cholesterol. About 7% of the people on the highest dose dropped out of the trial due to gastrointestinal side effects, they said. In another wrinkle that could have affected the results, more than 35% of the people in the study were men. Men generally lose less weight on the new generation of obesity medicines than women do.

Delivering more than 10% weight loss, as the pill managed to do, is enough to make a meaningful difference, said Stephen Lawrence, an associate clinical professor at the University of Warwick. Lawrence, who reviewed the data ahead of publication but wasn't part of the study, said the researchers did a good job recruiting a diverse population of patients to reflect real-world use of obesity medicines.

In the end, he said, not everyone needs to lose 20% of their body weight.

"I don't think it's about the extent of weight loss, because what you now have is an accessible form," Lawrence said. "It definitely has a place."

Lilly said it's on track to file for regulatory approval by the end of the year. The company has said it's asking the US Food and Drug Administration to fast-track the medication's review.

If approved, the once-daily pill would likely hit pharmacy shelves next year. Lilly has already stockpiled significant supplies for its anticipated launch.

"We hope for the faster review, and we'll be talking to the FDA and others in the Health and Human Service administration about that," Chief Executive Officer Dave Ricks said in a Fox News interview in August.

Novo may reach the market slightly sooner, saying it expects to hear from regulators about Wegovy-in-a-pill later this year. Its development was slowed because Novo initially couldn't keep up with demand for obesity medicine.

Lilly is also running a head-to-head study comparing its pill to a lower-dose semaglutide pill called Rybelsus in patients with type 2 diabetes.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)