What’s been Novo Nordisk's secret weapon to turn the tables on Eli Lilly and win the current market battle over their oral GLP-1 obesity drugs? Name recognition.
That's according to Jim Hickey, an analyst with Spherix Global Insights, who has studied the competition by surveying 50 primary care physicians (PCPs) and 50 endocrinologists in the United States, as well as writing monthly reports on the uptake of the drugs, both of which debuted on the market earlier this year.
“It’s interesting to see how strongly Novo Nordisk has come out of the gate,” Hickey said in an interview with Fierce. “It’s a very strong launch from what we can see. That lines up with the data Novo Nordisk has shared. I think a big difference between the two really comes down to familiarity. We see the familiarity ratings for Wegovy pill as being much stronger than what we can see for Foundayo.”
Novo’s pill, which it launched in January, has the advantage of sharing its name with the company’s injected weight-loss drug Wegovy, and both formats are derived from the same GLP-1 compound semaglutide.
Lilly’s Foundayo (orforglipron), which launched in April, is an entirely new molecule, differing from the company’s injected GLP-1/GIP blockbuster tirzepatide. In the U.S., the dual agonist is known as Zepbound for obesity and Mounjaro for Type 2 diabetes. Foundayo, on the other hand, is a single-target GLP-1 agonist like Novo's Wegovy pill.
