A new pill taken orally could be as effective for type 2 diabetes and weight loss as comparable injectable products, Eli Lilly announced Thursday.
The pharmaceutical giant already produces two GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines containing the active ingredient tirzepatide: Mounjaro, which is prescribed for diabetes, and Zepbound, for weight loss. The pill Lilly has tested has the active ingredient orforglipron.
Orforglipron is the first oral small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist drug taken without restrictions on food or water to get as far as it has in trial testing. The trials, Lilly said, compared it to the effect of a placebo with diet and exercise alone on subjects with type 2 diabetes and trouble controlling their blood sugar.
After 40 weeks, orforglipron lowered A1C on average by 1.3%-1.6% from an 8% baseline. A1C is a hemoglobin, a protein in blood that carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body, that has become chemically linked to a sugar molecule.
More than 65% of trial subjects who took the highest dose got their A1C baseline to or below 6.5%, the American Diabetes Association’s threshold for whether someone has diabetes.
Participants on the highest doses of orforglipron also lost 16.9 pounds on average. Lilly expects to submit orforglipron for weight loss to regulators worldwide by the end of the year and submit it for type 2 diabetes in 2026.
Having an oral option could be crucial, as levels of obesity and diabetes are expected to rise.
“In the coming decades, 700 million people around the world will have type 2 diabetes, and over a billion will have obesity. Injections cannot be the solution for billions of people around the world,” Lilly Chief Scientific Officer Daniel Skovronsky told The New York Times.
As compared to an existing GLP-1 pill, Novo Nordisk’s Rybelsus, orforglipron is not a peptide. As such, it’s easier for the body to absorb it and for the medicine to get past the digestive system, and patients wouldn’t need to abide by dietary restrictions while taking it, according to CNBC.
