Lilly says daily pill can lower blood sugar and weight in people with Type 2 diabetes
A daily pill from Eli Lilly lowered blood sugar levels and induced weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes, the company announced Thursday.
A daily pill from Eli Lilly lowered blood sugar levels and induced weight loss in people with Type 2 diabetes, the company announced Thursday.
The experimental pill, called orforglipron, is a GLP-1 drug — the same class of medicine as the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro.
Orforglipron is taken orally, however, not as a weekly injection.
“Everybody knows GLP-1s now, and they’re sort of famous as injectable peptide drugs, but we’ve engineered this now into a new kind of molecule that can be taken as a pill form,” Dr. Dan Skovronsky, Lilly’s chief scientific officer, said in an interview.
If it is approved, Lilly’s drug would be the second oral GLP-1 drug available in the United States. The first, Rybelsus, made by Novo Nordisk, contains semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. Rybelsus is approved for Type 2 diabetes.
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