A new oral weight-loss pill could offer a more convenient alternative to injectable drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Credit: Medicaleditswiki / Public domain
The United Kingdom became the first country in Europe to approve Eli Lilly’s once-daily tablet Foundayo, a new GLP-1 oral pill for the treatment of type 2 diabetes that also facilitates weight loss. The new pill comes from the same company that makes the popular weight loss Mounjaro injections and is designed to mimic the effects of a natural gut hormone.
Foundayo was already approved by the FDA in the US last April. The pill, known chemically as orforglipron, will be available via private prescription after Britain’s medicines regulator authorized the drug on August 10, making it the second GLP-1 oral pill to be cleared in the UK after Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, Reuters reports. The company said it was working with England’s health cost-effectiveness watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), on a potential roll-out at the state-run National Health Service.
Weight loss pill priced lower than injection
According to the manufacturer, the new pill will likely be priced between 100 and 120GBP (about $135 to $165), lower than its Mounjaro injection’s 330GBP ($450) for a month’s supply. Meanwhile, the pill remains under review in the European Union, while Novo’s Wegovy pill has attained a positive recommendation from the European Medicines Agency, with a final decision from the European Commission pending.
In a recent study, participants taking orforglipron lost up to 14.7 percent of their body weight over 36 to 40 weeks—comparable to results seen with semaglutide injections. Injectable GLP-1 receptor drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy have reshaped the treatment landscape for obesity and type 2 diabetes by helping patients to lower blood sugar levels and curb appetite thanks to mimicking a natural hormone in the body. Tens of millions of people now use them. However, their daily use is inconvenient for many patients as their peptide-based structure breaks down in the digestive system and can’t be delivered as effectively as pills.
Orforglipron, by contrast, is a small-molecule drug and, as it can be taken orally, it is more stable as well as is more affordable to produce, hence potentially widening access to effective weight loss therapies. Several pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Roche, have been racing to bring an oral GLP-1 drug to market.
