A Chinese pharmaceutical company is seeking approval to market Jiyoutai, an alternative to Ozempic that could be the first biosimilar drug to compete with Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss and diabetes drugs in China ahead of a potential flood of new obesity medicines in the country—especially as Novo Nordisk’s patent is set to expire in 2026. The announcement could bring fresh competition to Novo Nordisk in China, especially as the company has said it is planning to launch Wegovy—a version of semaglutide geared specifically toward weight loss—later this year. Reuters reports more than 100 similar drugs targeting diabetes and obesity are currently under development. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is also reportedly working to introduce its own weight loss drug to the Chinese market in collaboration with Chinese-based Innovent, and China approved a homegrown drug last year, but those were not biosimilars to Ozempic. A biosimilar is a drug that is considered to have “no clinically meaningful differences” with an already approved reference product, according to the Food and Drug Administration. In China, a nationwide obesity problem is driving demand for Ozempic and other so-called GLP-1 drugs. The market for GLP-1 drugs in China in 2023 was roughly $1.7 billion—with a majority of that coming through diabetes prescriptions, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the U. S., there’s a hot market for so-called generic versions of Ozempic and Wegovy, but the FDA has warned that these drugs are not approved, and they have been associated with various problems for patients. There are no approved generic versions of Ozempic or Wegovy, according to the FDA.300%. That’s how much prescriptions for Ozempic increased between the first quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2022 in the U. S. There were 9 million prescriptions for the drug in the final quarter of 2022 alone.
All data is taken from the source: http://forbes.com
Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesfarrell/2024/04/03/what-to-know-about-jiyoutai-chinas-first-potential-ozempic-challenger/
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