Anti-obesity treatment could cost as little as $3 per month - study

A blockbuster anti-obesity and diabetes drug could cost as little as $3 per month to manufacture once it goes off patent later this month, researchers said Friday, providing a major opportunity to boost health in low and middle-income countries.

Semaglutide, the active molecule in Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy treatments, leads to considerable weight-loss in patients and thus can provide major help in managing diabetes and other medical problems related to obesity.

Semaglutide will lose patent protection in countries such as Brazil, China and India later this month, and researchers identified 150 countries where it was never patented.

Using pricing information from other medicines that recently went off patent, researchers in Britain, South Africa and New Zealand calculated the potential generic manufacturing price for semaglutide.

They estimated it will cost as little as $3 to produce a month's supply of semaglutide, which in its branded form sells for around $200 a month in the United States.

Dr Samuel Cross of Imperial College London, one of the study's authors, noted that obesity and diabetes are chronic diseases that increase the risk of stroke, diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure and cancer.

"If generic production reduces prices to sustainable levels, millions more people could access treatment," he said.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffer from Type 2 diabetes, which can lead to kidney failure, blindness and amputation.

Globally, clinical obesity leads to 3.7 million deaths each year.

The researchers estimated that the 160 countries where semaglutide will not be under patent account for 69 percent of people with Type 2 diabetes globally and 84 percent of people with clinical obesity.

Another of the study's authors, Professor Francois Venter at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, said drugs to treat HIV, TB, malaria and hepatitis are now available at prices close to production costs but still sufficient for generic manufacturers to operate.

"We can repeat this medical success story for semaglutide," he said.

The researchers published their research directly and not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.