Eli Lilly has received approval in the U.K. to market the weight-loss pill Foundayo
The British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved Eli Lilly’s drug Foundayo for weight management and the treatment of type 2 diabetes. This is the first approval for Foundayo outside the United States, according to CNBC.
The drug’s active ingredient is orforglipron. Foundayo will be available by prescription through private healthcare providers. For the drug to become available through the UK’s National Health Service, it must still be evaluated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in terms of cost-effectiveness.
Foundayo is the second GLP-1-class weight-loss pill on the European market. Eli Lilly will compete in the UK with the oral version of Wegovy from Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, which was launched there two months earlier.
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Eli Lilly emphasizes that Foundayo, as a low-molecular-weight drug, can be taken without dietary restrictions. In contrast, the Wegovy tablet must be taken in the morning with a sip of water, and patients must not eat or drink for at least 30 minutes afterward.
Foundayo went on sale in the U.S. in April. In the second quarter, the drug generated $98 million in revenue for Eli Lilly, though its adoption has been slower than that of the tablet form of Wegovy. Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks attributed this to the fact that Foundayo is a completely new drug that needs time to gain acceptance among doctors and patients.
According to Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Dustdahl, during the first three weeks of sales of Wegovy tablets in the UK, the company estimates that approximately 300,000 patients began taking them. He also noted that oral weight-loss medications are expanding the market, rather than merely replacing more expensive injectable drugs.
