On January 26, Novo Nordisk Megglutide Tablets were approved by the National Drug Administration (NMPA) for marketing to treat type 2 diabetes. This is the first domestically approved oral GLP-1 (glucagon like peptide-1) receptor agonist.
The newly approved oral administration of Smegglutide is marketed as "Novoxin". Smeaglutide is famous for its weight loss effect, but it should be emphasized that the indication of this drug approved in China is the treatment of type 2 diabetes, not weight loss.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that the approved "Novo Nordisk" is not an oral version of the popular weight loss drug "Wegovy" or the hypoglycemic drug Ozempic. The clinical trial of the oral version of Wegovy is still ongoing.
A business insider told First Financial reporters that the dosage of "Novoxin" is different from the oral versions of Wegovy or Ozempic.
Novo Nordisk Smegglutide Oral Tablets is currently the only oral GLP-1RA drug approved for sale in the United States worldwide. In 2022, global sales reached 1.6 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 134%.
As early as 2019, the American diabetes Association and the European diabetes Association launched a new medical standard guide, which has proposed that insulin should not be used as the first line treatment for type 2 diabetes, and suggested that in most cases, GLP-1 RA should be the first injection therapy for diabetes.
There are about 140 million diabetes patients in China. In the early treatment of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients, 62% of patients only use oral medication. Despite the variety of oral hypoglycemic regimens, patients still face the challenge of poor blood sugar control. The data shows that the rate of reaching the standard of blood glucose in type 2 diabetes patients treated with oral antidiabetic drugs alone is less than 1/3. In addition, the management of type 2 diabetes generally faces the problem of high incidence of metabolic abnormalities. Nearly half of type 2 diabetes patients have abnormal blood lipids, and nearly 2/3 have hypertension. Therefore, experts suggest that the comprehensive treatment strategy for type 2 diabetes should include the control of metabolic indicators such as blood sugar, blood pressure and blood lipids.
Novo Nordisk is also another heavyweight innovative drug that Novo Nordisk is accelerating its introduction in China. Professor Wang Weiqing, the leading expert in the Chinese registered clinical research of the drug and director of the Endocrine Metabolism Department of Ruijin Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, said: "As an oral hypoglycemic drug, the drug can help more patients with type 2 diabetes overcome the injection barrier and obtain the hypoglycemic effect of GLP-1RA drugs earlier." Wang Weiqing pointed out that the research showed that the drug showed a strong hypoglycemic effect in the Chinese cohort, And the safety is good.