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Novo Nordisk has threatened legal action against Hims & Hers after the US telehealth group launched a cheaper version of the Danish drugmaker’s Wegovy pill, as competition heats up in the increasingly crowded obesity treatment market.
Hims & Hers said on Thursday that its new offering will retail at $49 per month and contains semaglutide, the same active ingredient as Wegovy. Novo began selling its Wegovy pill in the US last month for $149 a month at the lowest dose after it became the first oral version of a weight-loss drug to be approved by regulators worldwide.
Novo responded angrily to the move, calling it “illegal mass compounding” that it claimed posed a “significant risk to patient safety” and saying that it will take legal and regulatory action to protect patients and its patent.
“This is another example of Hims & Hers’ historic behaviour of duping the American public with knock-off GLP-1 products, and the FDA has previously warned them about their deceptive advertising of GLP-1 knock-offs.”
Hims & Hers is offering a “compounded” version of a weight-loss pill. Compounding involves the production of custom-made drugs using the same active ingredients that replicate the effect of branded medicines. Compounded drugs are not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Novo ended a tie-up with Hims & Hers last year after accusing it of deceptively marketing copycat versions of its blockbuster Wegovy weight-loss drug under the guise of “personalisation”, a claim that the telehealth group rejected at the time.
Compounded versions of obesity and diabetes drugs became popular in 2022 after the drugs exploded in popularity and pharma groups Novo and Eli Lilly struggled to meet demand. The FDA declared an official shortage of the drugs, allowing pharmacies to make versions of Novo’s Wegovy and Ozempic and Lilly’s Zepbound. The FDA has since said the shortages of the drugs were over.
The FDA sent a letter to Hims & Hers last September, warning that claims on its website that its compounded semaglutide products contained the “same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy” and were “clinically proven ingredients” were false because they implied the “products are the same as an FDA-approved product when they are not”.
Hims & Hers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move by Hims & Hers piles more pressure on Novo, which has warned that it expects net sales to decline by as much as 13 per cent this year on the back of increased competition and lower prices in the US.
Lilly is expected to receive regulatory approval later this year for its own pill version of the popular Zepbound drug.
Shares in Copenhagen-listed Novo were down 8 per cent on Thursday in midday New York trading while shares in Lilly’s were down 7 per cent. Hims & Hers shares were down 1.5 per cent.
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