The range of indications for peptide-based diet pills is gradually expanding. June 21, local time$Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.US)$It was announced that its popular diet drug Zepbound (the core ingredient is tesipatide/Tirzepatide) helps address moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, that the clinical trial achieved all major endpoints and key secondary endpoints, and symptoms were alleviated in more than 50% of patients participating in the trial.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) refers to interruptions in breathing during sleep due to narrowing or obstruction of the airways. Obstructive sleep apnea causes loud snoring and excessive daytime sleepiness, and can lead to serious complications, including high blood pressure, stroke, and heart failure. Other than using a heavy and uncomfortable positive airway pressure ventilator (PAP) to breathe normally, patients with this condition have very limited treatment options.

Earlier, actor Chen Qiao-en revealed that she had severe sleep apnea, and had not known about the problem for over 40 years until her husband discovered it. This caused the disease to receive attention for a while.

Weight loss drug giants scramble to expand the range of indications

Zepbound is one of the representative products of polypeptide diet pills (GLP-1 diet pills). It is the first and only obesity treatment approved by the US FDA to activate GIP (glucose-dependent insulin-promoting polypeptide) and GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) hormone receptors, which means that the drug has a dual mechanism of action and can treat diabetes and obesity in a “two-pronged” manner.

Zepbound was launched in US pharmacies in December 2023. Compared with Novo Nordisk's similar weight loss drug Wegovy (its core ingredient is simeglutide), Zepbound is cheaper. According to Lilly, the price of Zepbound is about 20% lower than Wegovy (simeglutide 2.4 mg injection).

Eli Lilly said in April that Zepbound helped reduce the number of irregular breathing attacks in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea, a 55% reduction in the first study and a 62.8% reduction in the second study. Patients in the first study were treated with Tirzepatide, while the second study used the drug along with PAP therapy to help patients keep their airways open during sleep.

On Friday local time, the American Diabetes Association announced the full results of these trials, showing that Zepbound helped 43% of patients taking medication alone and 51.5% of patients who used PAP together to resolve sleep apnea.

The standard for disease remission is for patients to have fewer than 5 episodes of shallow breathing or apnea per hour, or between 5 and 14 episodes, and no excessive daytime sleepiness.

After the peptide-based slimming elixir became famous, Eli Lilly and rival Novo Nordisk scrambled to get their products approved for other diseases. Novo Nordisk's Wegovy diet pill was approved in March this year to treat heart disease, and Eli Lilly expects to complete Zepbound's clinical trial for heart disease this year.

Over the past year, the market for such diet pills has continued to be booming, and Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly products are in short supply.

An Eli Lilly executive recently claimed that the company may not be able to meet demand this year, and may not even keep up with demand until 2025. The company has announced that it will invest an additional $5.3 billion to expand production capacity at its Lebanese manufacturing site in Boone County, Indiana to meet market demand for the diet drug Zepbound and the diabetes drug Mounjaro.

At the same time, Novo Nordisk is also making every effort to expand production. The company spent 11 billion US dollars in February to acquire three filling plants originally belonging to Conterent to produce the diet drug Wegovy and the diabetes drug Ozempic. However, these three plants will not be able to help Novo Nordisk increase production capacity until 2026.

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