On Friday, March 8th local time, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the celebrity weight loss drug Wegovy to reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack in overweight or obese adults.
As a new weight loss drug under the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, Wegovy and the company's diabetes drug Ozempic contain the same active ingredient, namely semaglutide, which was originally designed to treat type 2 diabetes and belongs to a class of drugs called GLP-1 (glucagon like peptide-1).
The principle of action of drugs like Wegovy is to suppress the patient's appetite and slow down the gastric emptying rate. Experimental data shows that Wegovy not only helps patients lose an average of 15% of their weight (approximately 68 weeks), but also reduces the incidence of heart attacks, strokes, or heart disease deaths by 20%.
John Sharretts from the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research stated that Wegovy is the first weight loss drug approved for cardiovascular disease.
Sharretts pointed out that adults with obesity and heart disease are at an increasing risk of cardiovascular complications, so providing a treatment plan that can effectively reduce such risks is a major advancement in public health.
Novo Nordisk responded on Friday that Wegovy's approval for cardiovascular disease represents a "crucial step towards addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time.". The company added that it is working hard to increase production capacity.
Novo Nordisk predicts that Wegovy will also be approved for cardiovascular disease in the European Union this year.
The FDA's decision is expected to help Novo Nordisk consolidate its leading position over its competitor, Lilly. Last November, Lilly's Tirzepatide injection was approved for weight loss in the United States under the drug name Zepbound.
The effectiveness of Zepbound in weight loss is not inferior to Wegovy, but it has not yet been proven to be effective in treating cardiovascular diseases.
It is worth mentioning that Novo Nordisk released the first phase trial data of its weight-loss oral drug, amybretin, this week. The data shows that after a 12 week trial, participants who used amycetin experienced an average weight loss of 13.1%. Wegovy can only reduce the patient's weight by about 6% after 12 weeks.
Martin Holst Lange, Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Novo Nordisk, stated that he believes the company can launch amyCretin before 2030.