Source: Finance Association
① Liraglutide drugs in the GLP family will expire in some countries this year. Although their efficacy is slightly lower than that of Novo Nordisk and Lilly's star products, they are still regarded by many generic drug companies as the key to entry; ② The UK has approved the Indian generic drug Biocon to replicate the Novo Nordelilaglutide drug Saxenda.
The global diet medicine market is currently divided in half. Novo Nordisk's meglutide products Wegovy and Ozempic and Lilly's Zepbound and Mounjaro are currently the most sought after drugs with the most remarkable curative effects on the market.
However, both companies were unable to supply pharmaceuticals to more consumers due to production issues. But it has also made the market for generic diet pills heated up. The industry expects the GLP generic market to reach 100 billion US dollars by 2030.
Novo Nordisk's previous generation product, the global patent for Saxenda, an injection with liraglutide as the main ingredient, will expire in several countries this year. It is also one of the first GLP-1 drugs to lose patent protection. In February of last year, it lost its patent protection in the Chinese market.
Compared to Wegovy and Ozempic, Saxenda is now a bit like “the tears of the times” (meaning something out of date), but the curative effects aren't enough to be quantified. The influx of generic drug companies will strongly create a large supply of generic drugs and cut prices, thereby opening up a larger market.
Among them, India's leading generic drug company Biocon has obtained permission to replicate Saxenda in the UK. Siddharth Mittal, the company's CEO, said with confidence that his team is securing Biocon's leading position in the generic drug market. The company has also submitted applications for generic liraglutide drugs to regulators in the US and Europe.
The future is bright
Diet pills have already generated record profits for Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, making other pharmaceutical companies very excited, and generic drugs are their key way to gain market share in a fair manner.
Biocon is an example of this. The company said it is building infrastructure to seize strategic opportunities centered on GLP drugs. Liraglutide products are just the beginning. After the patents for the more effective simeglutide and tizepatide products expire, the generic drug market is bound to set off a greater wave of competition.
Mittal said that diet pills will be a very attractive market for the next 20 years, and the UK approval for Biocon to produce liraglutide generics shows that Biocon is capable enough to seize this opportunity.
There is no shortage of leaders in the Chinese market. Last year, the liraglutide biosimilar developed by Huadong Pharmaceutical was approved to treat obesity. Hangzhou Jiuyuan Genetic Engineering Co., Ltd. stated last week that it is applying to sell simeglutide drug generics in China to control blood sugar in patients with type 2 diabetes.
Jiuyuan Genetic Engineering also stated that unless a competent court rules that the patent is invalid, it cannot commercialize the drug before the patent expires. According to Novo Nordisk's annual report, the patent for its simeglutide drug in China will expire in 2026, while the European and American market patents will expire from 2031 to 2032.
Jiuyuan Gene Factory also emphasized that the Chinese market potential of simeglutide is huge. The scale will grow from 2.5 billion yuan in 2022 to 43.9 billion yuan in 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of 33%.
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