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Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said Thursday it was cutting the supply of starter doses of its obesity drug Wegovy in the U.S. as it struggles to keep up with surging demand.
Chief Financial Officer Karsten Munk Knudsen told CNBC that halving the supply of Wegovy starter doses was intended to ensure existing patients could continue to assess the drug in the U.S.
“This is about safeguarding continuity of care for patients and, as a consequence, we only want to start patients with the amount of product in terms of [what] they can continue in therapy,” he told “Street Signs.”
Novo Nordisk reported forecast-beating first-quarter sales Thursday following a spike in demand for its blockbuster weight-loss drug.
Still, shares of the pharmaceutical giant were down 7% on Thursday morning on news of the supply cut.
Knudsen said the company was “ramping up supply every day,” and currently had two contract manufacturers working to boost output, with a third expected to come online in the second half of 2023. He added that there were further plans to increase production in the coming years.
“This is also a reflection of a very big market and a very big unmet need for safe and efficacious medication, and that’s where Wegovy comes in, being very efficacious and safe for patients [with obesity],” he said.
Growing cautiously
Knudsen added that while the drug had received regulatory approval in a number of countries outside the U.S., including the U.K., the company planned to progress cautiously.
“We are careful not to launch faster than we can scale our supply base,” he said. “We don’t want to launch into markets and then get into a supply squeeze as you see today with us reducing the initiation doses in the U.S.”
Wegovy is one of a number of drugs, alongside Ozempic and Mounjaro, which have been grabbing headlines amid a growing push to tackle rising global obesity rates.
Last week, Barclays forecast that the obesity drug industry could be worth as much as $200 billion within the next decade, as the demand and use cases for such drugs swell.
A forthcoming medical trial, dubbed Select and due to conclude in September, will provide an important litmus test for the cardiovascular benefits of such drugs, Knudsen said, potentially widening their possible use cases.
“Obesity as a recognized medical disease is reasonably young compared to many other disease areas, so that’s why we’re doing a lot of information and education about the importance of treating obesity as a disease, as a chronic disease,” said Knudsen.
“I’d say the Select trial is one piece of the evidence there in terms of showing that if you have an efficacious product like Wegovy treating obesity it will reduce risks associated with obesity,” he added.
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