The Wegovy pill is officially here

Losing weight has officially become more convenient. Wegovy, the popular GLP-1 obesity treatment, is now available in once-daily pill form.

On Tuesday evening, the Food and Drug Administration approved Novo Nordisk’s high-dose oral formulation of semaglutide for the treatment of obesity. In clinical trials, people taking the pill lost significantly more weight than those taking a placebo. The drug is expected to be available to the public early next year.

The Wegovy pill

Semaglutide and similar drugs mimic the hormone GLP-1, which helps, among other things, regulate our appetite and metabolism. It is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s obesity drug Wegovy as well as its diabetes drug Ozempic.

Wegovy and Ozempic are taken weekly by subcutaneous injection, although the former can be prescribed at a higher maximum dose. In 2019, the FDA approved Rybelsus, a semaglutide pill, but only to treat diabetes. This new approval is the first granted to an oral GLP-1 drug explicitly intended for the treatment of obesity. The newly approved pill, which will retain the Wegovy brand, is also approved for a higher maximum dose of semaglutide (25 milligrams) than Rybelsus (14 milligrams).

In the pivot OASIS-4 TrialPeople taking the Wegovy pill lost an average of 13.6% of their baseline weight over 64 weeks, compared to an average weight loss of 2.2% seen in the placebo group. These figures are consistent with clinical trial results observed with injectable Wegovy. About a third of participants in the treatment group lost 20% or more of their weight. Pill-related side effects also appear to be comparable to the original Wegovy. Most were gastrointestinal in origin, such as nausea, and were generally mild to moderate in intensity.

“With today’s approval of the Wegovy pill, patients will have a convenient, once-daily pill that can help them lose as much weight as the original Wegovy injection,” Mike Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk, said in a statement. statement of society.

The future of obesity treatment

The approval of the Wegovy pill is expected to spark an intriguing arms race for the next generation of obesity treatments.

Early next year, for example, the FDA will decide whether to approve Eli Lilly’s experimental pill GLP-1, or forglipron. Although the weight loss results seen with orforglipron are lower than those with the Wegovy pill, some research has suggested the latter could become a reliable maintenance treatment for people who have already lost weight with a more effective GLP-1 drug.

In 2026, the FDA will also decide whether to approve Novo Nordisk’s CagriSema combination treatment, which mixes semaglutide with cagrilintide, a mimic of the hunger-related hormone amylin, for a more powerful weight loss effect. And by the end of 2026 or 2027, the FDA will evaluate Eli Lilly’s triple agonist retatrutidea drug that has provided the most significant weight loss results in trials observed with any drug to date. There are still many other candidates in the pipeline, some of which may have their own benefits, such as fewer side effects.

As exciting as all this innovation is, it won’t necessarily be cheap. These GLP-1 drugs have always cost a pretty penny (Wegovy originally cost over $1,000 a month without insurance). Drug manufacturers began to lower priceand in Canada, a generic version of semaglutide will be available early next year. But it remains to be seen whether costs will fall enough to make these drugs easily affordable for all who benefit from them.