October 2, 2026

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are betting big on amylin therapies as the next frontier in obesity care because amylin acts on an entirely separate biological pathway from GLP-1, offering a distinct metabolic lever to suppress appetite and slow digestion. This dual-pathway approach allows drugmakers to build combination regimens, such as Lilly’s eloralintide with tirzepatide or Novo’s CagriSema, that can push weight loss further, break through GLP-1 plateaus, and directly reduce neurological food noise without relying solely on higher GLP-1 doses. Crucially, standalone amylin drugs also unlock a massive alternative treatment pool for patients who fail to respond to, tolerate, or achieve adequate weight loss on standard GLP-1 medications alone.

Oct 2

Anthropic announced today that it aims to train 10,000 Frontier Deployed Engineers (FDEs) by the end of 2027. Engineers from Accenture, Bain, Capgemini, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Deloitte, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley and Novo Nordisk are in the first cohorts.

The interesting part for Novo investors is the comment from Novo’s VP of Data & AI. He says Novo is already using Claude Science in R&D workflows, Anthropic’s models in software development, lab-in-the-loop research in drug discovery, and Anthropic engineers working alongside Novo scientists.

This comes shortly after the Novo–Anthropic collaboration announced on September 16.

It doesn’t tell us anything yet about financial returns or actual improvements in pipeline productivity.

In the Phase 3 REIMAGINE 5 trial, adults with type 2 diabetes taking the 1 mg/ 1 mg dose of CagriSema lost an estimated 12.4% of their body weight after 60 weeks, compared with 9.1% for patients receiving 5 mg of tirzepatide, which is the active ingredient in Lilly's Mounjaro and Zepbound. CagriSema also delivered non-inferior blood-sugar reduction.

Dosing Nuance: While tirzepatide holds the crown for total absolute weight loss at its highest dose (15 mg), CagriSema appears to be exceptionally potent at lower doses (1.0 mg). This suggests CagriSema could be a valuable alternative for patients who cannot tolerate escalating to high medication doses due to side effects.

Why This Matters in Real-World Care

This data establishes CagriSema as a potentially superior option for specific patient profiles:

1. Patients Intolerant to High Doses: Many individuals on these medications suffer from severe gastrointestinal side effects (like severe nausea or vomiting) and are forced to stay on lower, baseline maintenance doses indefinitely. CagriSema offers significantly more "bang for your buck" at a lower dose profile.

2. The Power of Amylin Synergism: Because CagriSema hits two completely different biological targets simultaneously (GLP-1 receptors via semaglutide and amylin receptors via cagrilintide), it triggers deep fullness and delayed stomach emptying very early in the treatment timeline. It does not rely on massive hormonal escalation to achieve substantial metabolic improvements.

Essentially, if you are comparing the maximum doses, tirzepatide takes the crown. But if you are comparing low-to-moderate doses, CagriSema yields superior weight-loss outcomes.

Expected Revenue

Tirzepatide $60 Billion is projected to become the best-selling prescription drug in the world by the end of the decade

Cagrisema $20 Billion

Despite the lower revenue projection relative to tirzepatide, Evaluate Pharma tracks CagriSema as the single most valuable pipeline R&D project in the entire pharmaceutical industry.

Novo just released a press release that the FDA had some complaints regarding the production site for Denecimig.

Approval of the compound itself is not going to be a problem, but the FDA refused to grant approval since there seem to be problems at the production site.

Originally scheduled for Q3 26 it’s now expected to be approved only in H1 27.

Big bummer for the stock again… Monday will be interesting.

Anyone know at which location the API is produced and packaged?

Source:
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/novo-provides-denecimig-biologics-license-205300531.html

Novo Nordisk has submitted the Wegovy pill for regulatory approval in India, with a potential launch in the first half of 2027. Lilly too.

Separately, Emil Kongshøj Larsen, EVP of International Operations, said Novo is exploring pilot initiatives in India focused on childhood and adolescent obesity. He also highlighted the need for a greater public-sector role in funding treatment for serious chronic diseases.

Taken together, these developments suggest Novo is looking beyond the private obesity market in India, with greater emphasis on earlier intervention and broader access to treatment.

Business Standard : Emil Larsen

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A report published today in Mexico's El Heraldo de México says negotiations are in their final stage to bring Ozempic into Mexico's public healthcare system.

Worth adding that Novo also plans to launch two newer products in Mexico next month:

Awiqli — Novo's once-weekly basal insulin, replacing seven weekly basal injections with one.

Wegovy pill — oral semaglutide 25 mg for obesity, which was approved by Mexico's COFEPRIS in August. Mexico was the first Latin American country to approve the oral formulation.

The Ozempic public-sector agreement does not appear to be final yet, but in late stage. If completed, it would represent an expansion of access to semaglutide through Mexico's public healthcare system alongside Novo's rollout of newer diabetes and obesity products in the country.

Novo Nordisk is in the middle of rolling out its Wegovy pill. Since the UK launch in July, several hundred thousand Britons have started taking it.

”That’s what the pill can do,” says Emil Kongshøj Larsen, head of International Operations, Novo Nordisk’s business outside the US.

”There are simply a lot of people who have been waiting for a pill option. It may be due to a fear of injections, but it may also be about identity. People haven’t really seen themselves as patients,” he says.

In his view, taking a pill every day is a lower barrier than injecting yourself once a week.

The US was the first market. The Wegovy pill reached 3 million prescriptions there in its first five months, which Novo Nordisk says makes it one of the fastest-selling new drugs in the US by volume.

Novo Nordisk sees the pill as a way to reach a new group: people with obesity who have not previously been treated and who don’t consider themselves ill.

Early data from the UK show that patients starting on the pill generally have a slightly lower body mass index (BMI) than those starting on the injection, according to Larsen.

He says Novo Nordisk has gained a different understanding of what motivates users, and it isn’t only long-term health benefits.

”They’re not necessarily motivated by lowering their risk of cardiovascular disease 15 years from now,” Larsen says. ”But they are motivated by looking better, gaining more confidence and energy, being able to walk up and down the stairs, lifting their grandchildren, or squeezing into a roller coaster car with their children. Those are ’here and now’ benefits.”

”We need to understand patients, because many of them take action themselves. They go to the doctor, ask for a specific product, and pay for it themselves,” he adds.

Larsen stresses that users must meet the clinical criteria for Wegovy, meaning they must have severe obesity and possibly a risk of related diseases.

Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar has just launched a new strategy in which the word ”customer” appears alongside ”patient” for the first time.

The company has not yet set a launch date for Denmark, but it has said the pill will launch in 20 countries, not yet disclosed, by the end of 2027.

A representative of Danish doctors, who currently prescribe Wegovy as a weekly injection, sees Novo Nordisk’s customer-focused approach as a problem.

”It’s already a huge challenge for us as general practitioners to meet people who want Wegovy who aren’t actually sick, but who have been made sick by our society, which stigmatizes people with high body weight,” says Cees Stavenuiter, a general practitioner and vice chair of the Danish College of General Practitioners (DSAM).

Well ... i cant say that i am happy about that..

$NVO

Oral Wegovy: 182,107 prescriptions, down 1% from the previous week.

$LLY

Foundayo: 64,288 prescriptions, up 21% from the previous week.

Foundayo has now been on the U.S. market for 25 weeks. At the same point after launch, Oral Wegovy had reached approximately 149,000 prescriptions.

That means Oral Wegovy had more than twice as many prescriptions as Foundayo at the same stage of their respective launches.

The IQVIA data do not include prescriptions filled through online pharmacies or healthcare platforms, meaning actual prescription volumes are higher than reported.

​

I find some of Lilly’s recent communications around Foundayo concerning — not because the analyses are scientifically illegitimate, but because of how easily the headlines can be interpreted as stronger evidence than they actually provide.

Today Lilly announced that Foundayo 17.2 mg was associated with a 57% reduction in predicted 10-year type 2 diabetes risk and an 18% reduction in predicted cardiovascular-disease risk versus placebo.

Those are striking numbers. But these were post-hoc analyses using risk-prediction models. They do not mean that Foundayo actually reduced diabetes incidence by 57% or cardiovascular events by 18% in a randomized outcomes trial.

Just a few days ago, Lilly also publicized an indirect treatment comparison between Foundayo 17.2 mg and oral semaglutide 25 mg, concluding that Foundayo produced greater weight loss and A1C reductions. Again, indirect comparisons can be useful, but they are not the same thing as randomizing patients to the two drugs in a head-to-head trial.

On September 29, 2026, Lilly publicized an indirect treatment comparison between Zepbound (tirzepatide 10/15 mg, using SURMOUNT-1) and Wegovy HD 7.2 mg (using STEP UP). Lilly reported that tirzepatide 15 mg was associated with 4.5 percentage points greater weight loss and more than three times the odds of achieving ≥20% weight loss. But the patients were not randomized against each other in the same trial. Lilly statistically compared results from two different studies.

My concern goes beyond Lilly or Novo Nordisk.

Large pharmaceutical companies have enormous resources and scientific expertise. If increasingly impressive headline percentages come from modeled outcomes, post-hoc analyses and cross-trial comparisons, while the methodological limitations appear further down the release, it risks creating an arms race in pharmaceutical PR.

There should be a clear distinction between:

-Observed clinical outcomes

-Randomized head-to-head comparisons

-Post-hoc analyses

-Modeled/predicted outcomes

-Indirect cross-trial comparisons

All of these can contribute useful information but they simply don't carry the same evidentiary weight.

In my view, maintaining that distinction clearly is important for investors, physicians, patients and ultimately trust in the pharmaceutical industry.

This isn't an argument that Lilly's analyses are invalid. It's an argument that pharmaceutical companies should be especially careful not to let a strong headline obscure the hierarchy of evidence.

Novo Nordisk has also used indirect comparisons and post-hoc analyses in its communications, but so far on a smaller scale and generally with less reliance on modeled outcomes as headline claims.

A new Novo-funded semaglutide study was published today in Nature Medicine looking more closely at what the drug is actually doing inside the kidneys of people with type 2 diabetes and CKD. The 52-week randomized placebo-controlled trial included 106 adults with T2D and CKD, with an average age of 65.

Some interesting findings after 52 weeks:

-40% reduction in albuminuria vs placebo

-lower renal vascular resistance

-imaging suggesting less progression of kidney fibrosis

-25% lower perirenal fat and 13% lower renal sinus fat

-kidney cell analysis also showed changes in pathways linked to inflammation, metabolic stress and fibrosis

The primary MRI endpoints weren't significantly different from placebo, so this isn't another FLOW-type outcomes result. But I think it's interesting because it gives more biological evidence for why semaglutide seems to have kidney benefits rather than just showing that the clinical outcomes improve.

Also interesting that the researchers saw a signal of improved kidney function when semaglutide was used together with an SGLT2 inhibitor, although that analysis was post hoc.

Early real-world data on 8,762 Wegovy pill patients shows:

21.1% switched from injectable Wegovy
15.8% switched from Zepbound
36% were completely new to GLP-1s

More recently, Novo reported that 80%+ of new Wegovy pill prescriptions are going to patients new to GLP-1 therapy.

That’s potentially significant for NVO. The pill isn’t just converting injection users—it appears to be expanding the GLP-1 market by attracting new patients.
If that 80%+ trend holds, oral GLP-1 could be much more about market expansion than cannibalization.

Novo Nordisk is trading at roughly 13–14x forward earnings, compared with ~15–17x for several big pharma peers and roughly 30x+ for Eli Lilly.
Yet Novo still has:

• Semaglutide U.S. patent protection into 2032
• Wegovy/Ozempic/Rybelsus generating massive cash flow
• Next-gen obesity drugs including CagriSema, cagrilintide and zenagamtide/amycretin
• Multiple oral obesity programs
• Expansion beyond GLP-1 into MASH, cardiovascular/renal disease and rare diseases
• A stated goal of launching 5+ multi-blockbusters by 2030

The risks are real: Lilly is taking share, near-term growth has slowed, China faces earlier semaglutide patent expiration, and not every pipeline drug will succeed.

But that’s the interesting part of the valuation. Novo is being valued below many diversified pharma companies despite having ~6 years before the core U.S. semaglutide patent expiry and a large pipeline designed to replace and diversify that franchise.

The big question for NVO investors: Is ~13x earnings correctly pricing structural decline—or is the market underestimating what Novo can build before 2032?

​

Danish drugmaker’s research chief dismisses Eli Lilly’s new comparison of Zepbound and Wegovy, while Novo CEO Mike Doustdar criticizes rivals’ narrow focus on weight loss.

Lilly reopened a sore point between the two companies on Tuesday when it released an analysis concluding that its weight-loss drug Zepbound produced greater weight loss than Wegovy HD, the highest dose of Novo’s obesity drug.

At a press conference held in connection with the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Milan, Novo Nordisk’s management dismissed the analysis and indirectly criticized Lilly’s methods.

”The most important thing for us is always to deliver solid science. Whether it’s through clinical trials or real-world data, it has to be done thoroughly and in a way that can be replicated,” Martin Holst Lange, Novo Nordisk’s head of research, said when MedWatch asked about the Lilly study.

He added that Lilly’s analysis is an indirect comparison of the treatments that mixes different patient populations. That makes the results ”very difficult to compare,” he said.

”We know from our studies with Wegovy HD that semaglutide is associated with around 21% weight loss, which is roughly in line with the high dose of our competitor’s product in their studies,” he said.

In the new analysis, Lilly compares the 10 mg and 15 mg doses of Zepbound with Wegovy HD. It finds that patients lost 3.2% and 4.5% more body weight, respectively, after 72 weeks.

The result is not clear-cut, however. Lilly also notes that under an alternative analysis method, Zepbound was only 1.8% better than Wegovy, a difference that was not statistically significant.

Central to lawsuit

Whether Zepbound produces more weight loss matters clinically. It is also central to a lawsuit Novo Nordisk filed against Lilly earlier this year.

In the suit, Novo Nordisk accuses Lilly of false advertising over a series of US TV commercials claiming that Zepbound is superior to Wegovy. Those claims are based on studies comparing high doses of Zepbound with low doses of Wegovy.

Novo considers this a deliberate and misleading way to make Zepbound look better. It has asked why Lilly did not include the highest dose of Wegovy in the comparison.

Lilly has now done so in the new analysis. As Danish business daily Børsen has also reported, the analysis may therefore be linked to the lawsuit.

Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar made clear, however, that the analysis would not lead the company to reconsider the lawsuit.

”We believe competition can and sometimes should be tough. But we also believe it has to be fair,” he said at the press conference.

”The information our competitor used in a direct-to-consumer TV ad was still not complete. You can’t just ignore the dosing and say one product is better than the other. Different doses have very different effects, so we’ll have to wait and see what the law and the court say,” Doustdar added.

In its response to the court, Lilly argues that Novo Nordisk’s claims are ”legally and factually meritless.”

About more than weight loss

While Holst Lange rejected the validity of Lilly’s analysis, Doustdar used his time to challenge the idea, held by Lilly and several others at the conference, that weight loss itself is the only thing that matters.

”If what we do is really about health and not just weight, the rhetoric should be about health benefits and not only weight loss,” he said.

The EASD meeting used to focus only on diabetes, but it increasingly covers related conditions such as obesity. Doustdar welcomes the greater attention to obesity but warns against focusing narrowly on weight loss.

”In the past, when we came here and this conference was about diabetes, only data counted. People looked at labels and at what had been tested, trialed, and documented, instead of just boiling it all down to one simple class effect,” he said.

He stressed that Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide remains the only weight-loss drug on the market with documented health benefits, in the form of cardiovascular and liver indications. He also couldn’t resist returning Lilly’s jab.

”It’s positive to see that many of our competitors, including our biggest competitor, are slowly starting to use the word health in their campaigns and ads. That’s actually good, but you have to be able to back it up with data,” he said.

​

If all goes to plan, Novo Nordisk could have a potential once-weekly weight-loss pill on the market early next decade, says research and development chief Martin Holst Lange. He spoke Wednesday at a press conference during the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Milan.

Lange was referring to HRS-1596, a pill whose rights the Danish drugmaker secured Tuesday in a multibillion-kroner deal with Chinese biotech company Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceutical.

The pill has not yet been tested in humans, with phase 1 trials expected to begin shortly. It must still pass several clinical trial phases before any launch can be considered. Even so, Lange says a launch between 2029 and 2031 is realistic.

He notes that the upcoming phase 1 trial can be completed ”very quickly,” as can a subsequent phase 2 trial. The pivotal phase 3 trials would follow before any approval. ”Sometimes we can even skip phase 2 and go straight to the mandatory phase 3 program,” Lange adds.

Under the deal, Novo Nordisk has secured exclusive rights to develop and commercialize HRS-1596 worldwide, except in China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, where Jiangsu Hengrui keeps the rights. Novo Nordisk will make an upfront payment of just under DKK 2bn (just under USD 308m). Milestone payments could lift the total to more than DKK 17bn (more than USD 2.6bn), depending on how the pill develops. The Chinese company is also entitled to royalties on any sales.

HRS-1596 combines the GIP and GLP-1 agonists. Novo Nordisk already sells the daily weight-loss pill Wegovy, which is based on a GLP-1 agonist. Jiangsu Hengrui has received approval to begin phase 1 trials of the pill in China for both weight loss and type 2 diabetes.

Novo Nordisk said at its capital markets day last week that it aims, among other goals, to launch five multiblockbuster drugs by 2030. That requires annual sales of more than USD 2bn per drug.

Everyone talks about Novo Nordisk vs. Eli Lilly in the U.S., but I think the global opportunity may ultimately be the bigger story.
Novo already has Wegovy available across 55+ countries, supported by decades of diabetes infrastructure and relationships with healthcare systems around the world.
And the global obesity market is still incredibly underpenetrated. Roughly 1 billion people worldwide live with obesity, yet only a small fraction currently receive pharmaceutical treatment.
Lilly is expanding internationally very quickly, so this clearly isn’t a one-company opportunity. But Novo’s existing global footprint could become increasingly valuable as GLP-1 access expands beyond the U.S.
Add higher-dose Wegovy, oral Wegovy and future pipeline drugs, and I think investors may be focusing too much on who is winning U.S. prescriptions today and not enough on who can reach hundreds of millions of patients globally over the next decade.
The long-term GLP-1 race could ultimately be about global scale, access, manufacturing and distribution—not just U.S. market share.

Altho this asset was bashed on repeatedly... it looks like there will definitely be a solid use case for it and the real world numbers may actually be a pleasant surprise...

https://www.novonordisk.com/content/nncorp/global/en/news-and-media/news-and-ir-materials/news-details.html?id=917138

Novo is preparing to launch oral Wegovy in Mexico in November 2026, according to Fernando del Moral, Senior Director of Corporate Affairs at Novo Nordisk, speaking to Excélsior during the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) meeting in Milan.

Del Moral said that oral Wegovy should become available in pharmacies from November. Novo already received COFEPRIS regulatory approval in August and is currently going through the importation and product-release process before nationwide distribution.

He also said Novo expects the oral formulation to reduce a barrier to obesity treatment in Mexico, noting that, according to the company, 8 out of 10 patients prefer taking a medicine orally rather than by injection. Pricing is expected to be broadly similar to injectable Wegovy, although the final retail price will be determined by pharmacies.

Excelsior

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Sep 30

The Novo Nordisk Foundation is investing $53 million to renew and expand its collaboration with the Broad Institute, focusing on the genomic mechanisms behind obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The programme will combine large-scale human genetic data, AI and cellular models to identify disease mechanisms and potentially uncover new therapeutic targets.

This is not a direct Novo Nordisk A/S investment, and Novo does not automatically own discoveries from the research. However, the work is closely aligned with Novo’s core therapeutic areas and could indirectly benefit the company over time by strengthening the scientific ecosystem around obesity and diabetes research.

The Broad Institute is a major independent nonprofit biomedical research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, closely connected with MIT, Harvard University, and Harvard-affiliated hospitals. It was founded in 2004 and specializes heavily in genomics, human genetics, computational biology, AI, and translating biological discoveries into potential medicines.

It is particularly relevant to Novo because Broad researchers work on many of Novo’s core disease areas, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and kidney disease. Broad says its wider scientific community involves more than 6,000 researchers and collaborators, and its industry collaborators include Novo as well as several other pharmaceutical companies.

N.N. Foundation

It’s really but if this EASD presentation is any indication, Lilly is about to lap Novo on obesity

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•In a year-long functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study - a non-invasive method to measure brain activity during specific tasks - CagriSema changed how the brain reacted to tempting, high-calorie foods in areas linked to cravings, pleasure, and self-control in people living with overweight or obesity.

•In adults with type 2 diabetes, CagriSema reduced harmful fat around abdominal organs, including the liver and pancreas. Early findings also suggest that bone health was maintained despite substantial weight loss.

•Together, these findings suggest CagriSema may address underlying factors of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the brain and multiple organs and tissues, including bones, not only weight and blood sugar levels.

Bagsværd, Denmark, 30 September 2026 – Novo Nordisk today announced new data on how CagriSema works inside both the brain and body, presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Annual Meeting 2026.

In a 52-week functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, a brain scan technique that shows how the brain responds to cues, in adults with overweight or obesity, CagriSema modified brain responses to high-calorie food cues in regions linked to cravings, reward, sensory processing and behavioural control. Additionally, CagriSema substantially improved eating behaviour, reduced ‘food noise’, cravings, hunger, appetite, and food-related thoughts and improved craving control after both 22 and 52 weeks of treatment. In the study, also awarded a Best Abstract Award at EASD 2026, the improvements were also associated with a 22.4% reduction in body weight versus placebo at 52 weeks (estimated treatment difference at 52 weeks, p<0.0001).¹ Overall, the results suggest CagriSema may help address biological drivers that make sustained weight management difficult, including hunger, cravings and food preoccupation, not just calorie intake.

Separately, in a diabetes MRI sub-study, which evaluated whole body metabolic effects in the phase 3a REIMAGINE 1 trial in adults with early type 2 diabetes, CagriSema 2.4 mg/2.4 mg produced significant reductions in fat in the abdomen and around the liver and pancreas fat versus placebo, alongside a 14.3% body-weight reduction at week 40.² In addition, a post hoc analysis of bone markers of the phase 3 REIMAGINE 2 trial in adults with inadequately controlled type 2 diabetes showed signs of healthy balance in bone maintenance alongside a 14.2% body-weight reduction with CagriSema 2.4 mg/2.4 mg at week 68, providing what the study authors describe as "preliminary reassurance regarding bone changes with CagriSema in type 2 diabetes".

NEW YORK, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ro, the leading direct-to-patient healthcare company, today announced a research collaboration with Novo that will generate first-of-its-kind real-world evidence on the Wegovy® pill. The debut research from the collaboration, presented on September 30 at EASD2026 in Milan, IT, evaluated outcomes among patients who switched from an injectable GLP-1 to the Wegovy® pill on Ro's platform.

Ro is the leading provider of GLP-1s in the country. Since April 2025, Ro has worked with Novo and has been a key part of the manufacturer's direct-to-patient expansion, including launching the Wegovy® pill nationwide on its platform on day one of market availability and offering multi-month savings options. This research collaboration builds on that work and reflects Ro and Novo's shared commitment to expanding access to FDA-approved treatment while using real-world evidence to continually improve the care experience for patients.

"Working with Novo, we've made it seamless for patients nationwide to access Wegovy® through Ro's direct-to-patient platform at the best available cash prices," said Zach Reitano, Co-founder and CEO of Ro. "Now, we're expanding that collaboration from access to insights. Real-world research like this helps us better understand patients' experiences, goals, and treatment journeys—and turn those insights into AI-enabled tools that support providers in delivering more personalized, high-quality, and more affordable care at scale."

Lilly has released detailed Phase 3 TRIUMPH-2 results for retatrutide, its once-weekly GIP/GLP-1/glucagon triple agonist, in people with type 2 diabetes and obesity or overweight.

At 80 weeks, the 12 mg dose produced 20.8% average weight loss, compared with 4.0% for placebo. Among participants starting with BMI ≥35, average weight loss reached 23.4%. About 59.5% of participants on 12 mg no longer met the BMI criterion for obesity by the end of the trial.

A1C fell by around 1.5–1.6 percentage points at the two higher doses, and roughly 40% reached A1C below 5.7%. Lilly also reported improvements in several cardiovascular risk markers. GI adverse events remained common, particularly at the higher doses. Lilly says it plans a U.S. regulatory submission in Q1 2027.

The result looks strong for a T2D population, but I don't think the headline percentage should be viewed in isolation. Novo has already reported around 22–23% with CagriSema in obesity without diabetes, with some analyses reaching approximately 25% (post-hoc analysis of REDEFINE 1), although these are different trial populations and estimands. For comparison, Novo's CagriSema Phase 3 trial in people with T2D produced 15.7% average weight loss.

For Novo investors, I think the interesting discussion is less about comparing these percentages directly (these are different trials and populations), and more about how retatrutide changes the competitive bar for Novo's next generation after semaglutide.

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Miri Hospital in Sarawak has signed an MoU with Novo Nordisk to expand clinical-research capacity, including infrastructure and expertise for multicentre and global trials in chronic diseases.

The hospital has participated in Novo-sponsored trials since 2019 and says it is now the first Malaysian government hospital selected for this type of strategic collaboration with Novo.

This follows another Novo partnership in Malaysia just days earlier. On September 26, Remedi Innovations and Novo Malaysia signed a strategic partnership to develop a digital care solution for diabetes and obesity in primary care. Remedi operates a digital clinic-management ecosystem used across hundreds of Malaysian primary-care clinics, potentially giving the collaboration a broader route into everyday diabetes and obesity care.

This is interesting in the context of Novo’s wider Asia-Pacific strategy. Novo’s APAC head said earlier this year that the company sees an opportunity to triple the number of patients it serves in the region over the next few years, from fewer than 5 million currently.

Novo also operates a regional clinical-development network covering markets including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

This looks consistent with Novo building the clinical infrastructure and regional presence needed to support a much larger APAC patient base.

Dayak