Novo Nordisk

On Monday, Novo Nordisk announced that the results from its Phase 3 trial investigating semaglutide as a treatment for Alzheimer’s “did not confirm the superiority of semaglutide versus placebo in the reduction of progression,” of the disease, according to the press release.  Monday’s announcement had a silver lining. That is, the treatment did result in…

Novo Nordisk, which helped kickstart the GLP-1 craze by expanding a diabetes drug to obesity, is slimming down the prices of Ozempic and Wegovy. That won’t necessarily translate into steep revenue drops in 2026 though. Current projections still point to rising semaglutide sales next year, and a drop in price could lead to a boost…

On Thursday, the Trump administration announced agreements with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the prices of the companies’ GLP-1 drugs for Americans. Under the agreements, Ozempic and Wegovy will be sold at $350 per month and Zepbound for an average of $346 per month, depending on dose, when purchased through TrumpRx, a platform…

Pfizer has filed two lawsuits against the metabolic-focused startup Metsera and Novo Nordisk as of Tuesday. The first suit, filed last Friday, claims that Novo Nordisk’s rival bid for Metsera is a move “to suppress competition,” Pfizer said in a press release.  Metsera could be a vital acquisition for either company. The company is developing…

Once so valuable its market capitalization eclipsed that of its home country of Denmark, pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk is now showing signs of strain. Most recently, several members of Novo Nordisk’s board of directors quit after failing to reach an agreement with the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the firm’s controlling shareholder (via Novo Holdings), on the…

It took just one off-hand comment during a White House event about fertility treatments for President Trump to temporarily wipe tens of billions from the market cap of the world’s leading obesity drugmakers. Trump’s vow Thursday to bring Ozempic down to $150 per month, calling it “the fat-loss drug,” sent Novo Nordisk shares down 6.3%…

Novo Nordisk has agreed to acquire Akero Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company that develops treatments for metabolic diseases, the company announced last week.  Akero’s EFX pipeline Akero Therapeutics’ treatment for metabolic-dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) “is closely linked with Novo Nordisk’s expertise in diabetes and obesity,” the press release stated. More than 40% of patients with MASH, formerly…

Novo Nordisk’s $5.2 billion acquisition of Akero Therapeutics sits at the center of 2025’s hottest M&A space: MASH/metabolic disease. The deal, announced October 9, represents the largest of three major Fibroblast Growth Factor 21 (FGF21) analog acquisitions in five months. Across the broader landscape, 2025 pharma M&A activity reached approximately $70 billion in upfront consideration…

Novo Nordisk has laid off dozens of employees at its plant in North Carolina, an analysis of LinkedIn posts by Reuters found. The layoffs come after the company announced a plan to cut 9,000 jobs globally in an effort to compete with Eli Lilly last month. The exact number of layoffs at the Clayton plant…

The pharmaceutical blockbuster model is wobbling. And no single franchise is safe. While king Keytruda, Merck’s stalwart oncology drug, continues to rule the first half of 2025 with $15.2B in sales (Q1 $7.2B, Q2 $8.0B), its U.S. patent expiry in 2028 the single biggest loss of exclusivity event on the horizon. In the U.S., Medicare…

Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic, announced a plan to reduce its global workforce by approximately 9,000 positions today. Around 5,000 positions are expected to be cut in Denmark. This will reduce the company’s workforce from its current 78,400 positions to approximately 69,400.  The company’s stock has fallen about 58% over the past year as…

Ozempic is still the GLP-1 king, but Lilly is rapidly gaining market share, with its Q2 2024 sales reaching $3.01 billion compared to Novo Nordisk’s $5.38 billion. In terms of Q2 quarterly sales, Lilly’s chronic weight management therapy Zepbound in particular is growing quickly with 140% growth between Q1 and Q2. Mounjaro, which, like Zepbound…

Liraglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist medication that first won FDA approval in 2010, may reduce cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s patients. At this year’s Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, data from a Phase 2b clinical trial with 204 mild AD patients serving as participants was revealed, showing that the drug lowered decline in cognition by up to…

By now, almost everyone has heard about the meteoric rise of GLP-1 drugs, like Wegovy and Mounjaro. But a perhaps under-appreciated reality is that the GLP-1 obesity drugs are poised to drive record overall prescription drug sales growth and catapult Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly into the upper echelon of Big Pharma companies by the…

[Updated May 21, 2024.] 2023 may not go down as the brightest year for the pharma sector, but the entry of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic (semaglutide) into the ranks of top-selling drugs like Keytruda, Dupixent, and Eliquis signals a new era in the treatment of metabolic disease. Novo Nordisk’s sales jumped by more than one-third in…

A recent review of more than 2,000 studies related at least indirectly to obesity on clinicaltrials.gov highlights the pronounced significant shift in research focus toward GLP-1 receptor agonists for a range of indications with at least some involvement of metabolic disorders. The site, which provides a robust but not-exhaustive snapshot of clinical trial activity, cites…

A collaboration between the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO), and NVIDIA will establish a national AI Innovation Centre in Denmark focused on accelerating research and innovation in fields including healthcare, life science, and quantum computing. The initiative is led on the Danish side by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which…

Semaglutide was already one of the best-selling drugs of recent memory. And Novo Nordisk the fastest-growing Big Pharma firm. Now, the FDA’s decision to expand the label of its weight-loss version of the drug to include cardiovascular benefits could help unlock more growth momentum for Novo Nordisk. This positions Wegovy as the first weight-loss medication…

Novo Nordisk will halt the phase 3b FLOW trial, which investigated the effects of once-weekly injectable semaglutide on kidney outcomes in individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). The company reached the decision following the recommendation of the independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC), following an interim analysis that met pre-specified criteria…

The GLP-1 drug market continues to boom lately thanks to highly effective new medications like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and continued demand for the drug class in diabetes. The runaway success of Wegovy and Ozempic (both formulations of semaglutide) has caused Novo Nordisk’s share price to skyrocket in 2023, briefly making the Danish pharmaceutical company the most…

The obesity drug market has seen a surge of interest recently, largely thanks to the popularity of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro. The explosion in interest in the drug class has fueled the stock prices of Novo and Lilly, which both have multiple GLP-1 drugs in their portfolios. …

Facing potential competition from Novo Nordisk’s (NYSE:NVO) investigational blood coagulation factor stimulants Mim8, Roche (SIX:RO, ROG; OTCQX:RHHBY) released positive new data from the Phase 3 HAVEN 6 study focused on the use of Hemlibra (emicizumab) in patients with mild or moderate hemophilia A. Hemlibra won FDA approval in 2018 for hemophilia A without factor VIII…

Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) continues to face supply shortages for its Wegovy (semaglutide) pens, which are FDA approved for weight management.  Against that backdrop, a growing number of companies have begun selling compounded versions of the drug.  Drug compounding involves “combining, mixing, or altering ingredients to create a medication tailored to the needs of an individual patient,”…

Given the complexity of the pharmaceutical business and the generally slow pace of new drug development, it can be challenging to identify leading pharma executives. Compensation is not necessarily an accurate barometer of success. That said, CEOs’ annualized return over tenure as CEO over their term can hint at performance. In addition, rating sites like Glassdoor…

The pharmaceutical industry continues to see strong growth and is poised to have a compound annual growth rate of 13.7% from 2020 to 2027, according to projections from Grand View Research. The best pharma companies to work for continue to offer a number of advantages to skilled workers. Pharma positions remain in high demand, and…