After Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy made its debut in Asia by launching in Japan last month, the pharma company says it now expects the drug to be approved in Chinathis year.
The Wegovy launch in Asia’s largest market, where Novo Nordisk has had a presence since 1994, will be at capped volumes and will start with patients paying out-of-pocket for the drug, Christine Xiaping, the head of Novo Nordisk in China, told investors Thursday.
Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Jorgensen said last month that executives at food companies have called him because they “are scared” about weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic, which are meant for patients with diabetes and weight loss. Ozempic and Wegovy are part of a class of medications known as GLP-1, which suppress user appetite. In the U.S. and abroad, demand for both weight loss drugs is growing almost beyond supply.
Chinese manufacturers have filed clinical trial applications for GLP-1 drugs to treat both diabetes and obesity, but are not expected to get approval until 2028, Xiaping said.
In January, Novo Nordisk reported that its sales in 2023 rose 31% to 232.3 billion Danish kroner, or $33.8 billion, compared to 177 billion Danish kroner, or $25 billion, the year before. And according to Bloomberg Intelligence, the market for weight loss drugs, including Eli Lilly’s popular Zepbound, could reach $80 billion by the end of the decade.
And new drug trial results for a Novo Nordisk weight loss pill that could be even more powerful than Ozempic and Wegovy powered Novo Nordisk stock to a record high on Thursday, sending its market cap past Tesla’s. Novo Nordisk said an early-stage drug trial of an oral version of an obesity drug called amycretin saw users lose 13% of their body weight after 12 weeks.
The global demand for Novo Nordisk’s weight loss drugs is expected to help power Denmark’s GDP growth to 2.1% this year, according to a Danske Bank report. Novo Nordisk already helped Denmark, where it is headquartered, avoid a GDP contraction last year.