Obesity pill race heats up

? (News anchor) 00:00.110

let's get more now on the story pharma and biotech reporter annika kim constantino annika what's the story here is this pill going to be ready soon right

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 00:08.710

so thanks for having me on today so basically the news today is that lily has trial data showing that its obesity pill could be an effective maintenance treatment for people that want to preserve their weight loss but don't want to keep taking weekly injections like wegovy and

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 00:22.230

zepbound so in this trial they basically followed people that initially took these injections for around seventy two weeks and then they randomized them to either take a placebo or the pill after a year and so what this data found is that people who switched to the pill pretty

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 00:36.670

much maintain the majority of the weight that they initially lost on the injections and so people that were in the wegovy group only regained about two pounds of their weight after a year and people in the zeppelin group only regained maybe around eleven pounds of that weight

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 00:49.030

and so this is great news for lily it kind of points to the additional role that this pill could play in the broader weight loss drug market as a maintenance treatment and that could further boost uptake for the drug once it gets approved

? (News anchor) 00:59.790

cost comparison between the pill versus the injection right

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 01:03.190

so we don't know exactly how novo nordisk or eli lilly will price these pills yet you know that's usually announced after an approval and these drugs are both not approved yet but we do have some clues like when they struck a deal with president donald trump last month you know

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 01:16.870

trump did say that the starting doses for these pills will be a hundred fifty dollars per month you know for people that want to pay with cash on the direct to consumer website RX which is launching in january twenty twenty six but we still don't know what some of these higher

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 01:31.070

doses for the pills are going to cost but you know that hundred fifty dollars range that's already much less than what we're seeing with these is that the insurance

? (News anchor) 01:37.790

costs or is that the cost cost that's the

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 01:39.630

cost cost for cash paying patients who would pay for direct

? (News anchor) 01:42.750

that's i mean that's still a lot of money for a lot of people but it's way lower than the thousand plus dollars that some non insurance payers are paying for the injectable version isn't it exactly

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 01:53.750

so some of these injections or both of them around a thousand dollars per month before insurance and right now obesity coverage for these drugs is very spotty but you know under this trump deal that we saw last month you know part of that deal is going to expand coverage

Annika Kim Constantino (Pharma and biotech reporter) 02:07.550

medicare coverage for the very first time to obesity drugs so that's going to be a notable change that we're going to see probably in early to mid twenty twenty six