Glooko Inc. secured a $100 million series F financing to support expansion of its diabetes ecosystem platform, which integrates information from more than 200 devices on a centralized, digital data platform that simplifies care for patients and clinicians. At the same time, the company reported the appointment of Mike Alvarez as CEO.
Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk A/S is set to launch its blockbuster glucagon-like peptide-1 therapy, Wegovy (semaglutide), in South Korea’s growing obesity therapeutics market next week, a company official confirmed to BioWorld.
Medtronic plc reported a voluntary recall of certain insulin pumps after customers said a single drop, bump, or physical impact could shorten their battery life.
Neurobo Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., reported top-line phase Ia study results of its obesity drug candidate, DA-1726, Sept. 30, causing the company’s shares to lose 11.7% of their value over two days.
In one of the top series A financings in biopharma history, new company Kailera Therapeutics Inc. emerged with $400 million raised and a pipeline of next-generation assets to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The U.S. FDA has lifted the full clinical hold it imposed in June on Biomea Fusion Inc.’ s phase I/II studies of BMF-219 in types 1 and 2 diabetes. A safety review of the phase IIb expansion study was encouraging and none of the elevated lab values confirmed serious liver injury or impairment, said Biomea’s CEO, Thomas Butler.
Given the demand for Ozempic and Wegovy and the revenue the GLP-1 drugs are generating for Novo Nordisk A/S in the U.S., a lot of generic companies are clamoring to cash in on the drugs’ current popularity. And there are some U.S. lawmakers more than willing to oblige.
While in the hot seat at a Sept. 24 U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing, Novo Nordisk A/S President and CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen said he would sit down with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the three largest pharmacy benefit managers to discuss lowering the list prices for the company’s popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.
Two leading glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists for obesity and type 2 diabetes – Novo Nordisk A/S’s semaglutide (Wegovy/Ozempic) and Eli Lilly and Co.’s tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) – are advancing in China after taking the U.S. market by storm.
As Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly and Co. go head-to-head in the U.S. and Chinese glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA) market for diabetes and obesity, Novo Nordisk is in innovator gear once more with leading studies of GLP-1s in Alzheimer’s disease.
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