Novartis doesn’t want to play the me-too game in obesity.
On Thursday, CEO Vas Narasimhan said that trying to compete in the multibillion-dollar obesity market with an injectable or oral GLP-1 or GIP drug “is not a prudent approach for us as a company” and would instead look at new and different targets for the condition.
His comments on the Swiss pharma’s second-quarter earnings call put Novartis squarely in the camp of companies that are uninterested in playing catch-up with the market leaders Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Other drugmakers, including Pfizer, Amgen and Roche, have committed to getting into the market with their own GLP-1 drugs sooner rather than later.
Narasimhan said that patients seeking the first-generation options will be well-served by the “two leading incumbents,” though added the caveat that Novartis may need one of those drugs for future combination potential.
The next-gen options Novartis is focused on are all preclinical, Narasimhan said, and all have at least one of the following traits: long-acting potential, better tolerability, or improved muscle retention.
The CEO said the company had taken a lesson from previous missteps in cancer, where it tried to compete in immuno-oncology and PD-1 inhibitors when the field was already crowded, according to Narasimhan.
“We had the experience of coming late into PD-1 inhibitors and immuno-oncology with lots of capital spent,” he said. “In the end, probably not well-spent.”
Almost every major pharma has been asked extensively by investors about its obesity plans. Like Novartis, many have taken a watch-and-wait approach, or looked at future mechanisms.
Stifel’s Tim Opler wrote in a July 7 review of the space that NLRP3-targeting drugs, among others, could be part of the next wave. Novartis currently has one such drug, DFV890, thanks to its 2019 acquisition of IFM Tre. The asset is in three clinical trials across three indications, none of which include obesity or weight management.
Among the drugmakers trying to catch up with Novo Nordisk and Lilly, Roche had the most recent data readout, with early-stage results from two trials that came out of the company’s $2.7 billion acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics. Pfizer is advancing its GLP-1 drug danuglipron into Phase 1b. And Amgen earlier this year released promising results from a Phase 2 trial of its GLP-1/GIP drug, MariTide, and said it would move to Phase 3.