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Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are preparing to take their rivalry to the next frontier of weight-loss medications: pills. Both companies expect to launch oral obesity drugs in the U.S. next year, once regulators approve them. Daily pills could introduce more people to GLP-1s, the class of medicine that’s best known for weekly shots. But after Lilly’s pill produced less weight loss than analysts had expected in a recent late-stage trial, it raised new questions about how widely the oral drugs will be adopted and which rival company will dominate the space. Doctors will get a closer look at how Lilly and Novo’s pills compare in the coming months when Lilly releases the results of a head-to-head trial of the two, Lilly’s Chief Scientific Officer Dan Skovronsky said in an exclusive interview with CNBC. The study’s main objective is to measure how much the pills can reduce blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes, but it will also gauge weight loss. “We wouldn’t have undertaken this head-to-head phase three randomized control trial unless we had a lot of confidence that orforglipron would fare well in comparison to oral semaglutide,” Skovronsky said. Nikos Pekiaridis | Nurphoto | Getty Images He cautioned against making comparisons across trials that didn’t directly compare the drugs, where Novo’s pill looks more effective and led to fewer discontinuations. Meanwhile, Novo’s Chief Scientific Officer Martin Holst Lange in a separate interview said the data speak for themselves. Novo’s forthcoming obesity pill is an oral version of its weekly shot Wegovy; Lilly’s pill is a new drug called orforglipron that’s different from its shot Zepbound. Lilly’s shot is the gold standard in terms of efficacy, Skovronsky said. It can help people lose more than 20% of their body weight. Neither Novo’s pill nor Lilly’s oral drug…

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Filed under: News - @ September 12, 2025 4:25 pm