The drug that built Novo Nordisk has been losing ground to Lilly's Zepbound for nearly two years. New trial data may give Novo a fresh sales pitch.
Novo Nordisk shared a new look at trial data on its 7.2-milligram Wegovy shot on Tuesday. The 7.2-mg dose launched in the U.S. one month ago.
The new data tracks a subset of patients the firm calls "early responders." They lost at least 15% of their body weight in the first six months.
Those patients went on to lose 27.7% of their weight at 72 weeks on average. That is the eye-catching number.
The full picture is more modest. Across all patients on the higher dose, average weight loss was about 21%. That is up from roughly 17% on the older 2.4-mg dose, which had been Novo's strongest shot until this spring.
About one in four patients on the 7.2-mg dose hit that early-responder mark. One in five did on the older dose. Patients who did not respond early still lost 15.4% on average in the trial.
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Zepbound has averaged more than 20% weight loss in late-stage studies. Most doctors see it as the stronger of the two shots, and that has helped Lilly take share from Novo.
The new high-dose Wegovy gets Novo into the same neighborhood, which is the whole point of the launch.
Novo said on its latest earnings call that the three biggest pharmacy benefit managers have already added the new dose to their main drug lists. PBMs are the firms that decide which drugs insurers will cover.
The catch is that there is no public head-to-head data on "early responders" for Zepbound. Without that, 27.7% is hard to compare to anything Lilly puts out.
Dr. Dror Dicker, a clinical professor at Tel-Aviv University, said in the release that patients who did not respond early still saw clear and lasting weight loss.
Analysts have flagged a separate worry. Zepbound's lead may be hard to undo, since doctors and patients have already settled into it.
The next signal to watch is U.S. weekly prescription share over the next two quarters.
Novo also said on its earnings call last week that users are already ramping up to the 7.2-mg dose. That suggests the supply chain is keeping pace with demand for the new shot.
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