Keep knowledgeable with free updates
Merely signal as much as the Prescribed drugs sector myFT Digest — delivered on to your inbox.
India’s highly effective copycat pharmaceutical business is about to roll out generic weight-loss medication within the UK inside weeks, with one main producer forecasting a “enormous value battle” that might widen entry to the favored medicines.
Bengaluru-based Biocon is the primary firm to win UK authorisation to supply a generic model of Novo Nordisk’s Saxenda weight remedy and is able to launch gross sales by November.
Saxenda is an older drug of the identical GLP-1 drug class because the Danish firm’s well-liked Ozempic diabetes remedy and Wegovy weight-loss medicine.
In an interview with the Monetary Instances, Biocon chief govt Siddharth Mittal declined to touch upon his pricing technique for generic Saxenda, however predicted his firm’s gross sales of the drug would attain £18mn yearly within the UK after the expiry of its patent safety there subsequent month. Mittal stated he anticipated Biocon’s generic model of Saxenda to be authorized by the EU this 12 months and within the US by 2025.
“When the generics are available there shall be an enormous value battle,” he stated. “There’s a enormous demand for these medication on the proper value.”
Within the US, Israeli drugmaker Teva in June launched a generic model of Victoza, a Novo Nordisk diabetes drug based mostly on liraglutide, the identical energetic ingredient as Saxenda.
The introduction of generic variations of Saxenda may show a “dry run for semaglutide”, the energetic ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, stated Christopher Sharp, an mental property lawyer at Pinsent Masons.
Sharp stated there was more likely to be robust competitors from generics corporations eager about growing GLP-1s “as a result of the prize is so excessive”.
Biocon and different massive Indian generic producers together with Cipla, Dr Reddy’s, and Solar Prescribed drugs Industries have been eagerly awaiting the erosion of Novo Nordisk’s exclusivity on GLP-1s.
The Danish firm’s patents for semaglutide, the energetic ingredient in its blockbuster weekly Ozempic and Wegovy therapies, will start to run out throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas from 2026 and from 2030 within the US.
Wegovy and Ozempic powered Novo Nordisk to file gross sales in 2023. The worldwide market in GLP-1s is predicted to develop to over $140bn by 2030 from beneath $40bn in 2023, based on GlobalData, a knowledge supplier.
Specialists say entry of generic competitors can usually lead to a lack of round 80 per cent of the market share of the unique provider, and falls in drug costs of about 20-30 per cent.
Novo Nordisk’s gross sales of Saxenda are already down 36 per cent within the first half of 2024. The drug have to be injected every day and is much less efficient than once-weekly therapies corresponding to Wegovy and rival Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro.
Novo Nordisk declined to remark. The Danish firm is at the moment centered on rising provide of semaglutide to fulfill runaway demand within the US and current markets and to introduce it to new international locations.
“They don’t have sufficient manufacturing capability,” stated Prashant Nair, director at Mumbai-based Ambit Capital. “[That] is one thing Indian corporations can present and if that occurs then India and different rising markets can open up.”
India is predicted to be a core driver of GLP-1 gross sales for the nation’s generic drug sector, the world’s largest. The World Well being Group estimates 77mn Indian adults endure from kind 2 diabetes and authorities well being surveys present nearly one in 4 are chubby or overweight.
India’s authorities has additionally introduced it’ll subsidise the manufacturing of diabetes and weight-loss therapies as soon as the patent for semaglutide expires within the nation in 2026.
“There’s been some authorities push,” stated Joydeep Ghosh, a associate at Deloitte India. “There are a number of critical large-sized Indian generics gamers who’re properly positioned even now.”
Srikanth Mahadevan, a director at Deloitte centered on healthcare, stated gross sales of weight-loss medication in India have been estimated to be only a tenth of these within the US, however that will change as soon as the nation launched semaglutide therapies.
India was going to be a “enormous market given how large the affected person base is”, Mahadevan stated.
