Novo Nordisk to seek Wegovy pill approval in China within months

Novo Nordisk (NOVO) plans to submit its oral Wegovy weight-loss pill for Chinese regulatory approval within a few months, Chief Executive Mike Doustdar said, as the Danish drugmaker seeks to close the gap with rival Eli Lilly (LLY) in the world's second-largest pharmaceutical market.

Novo and Indianapolis-based Lilly both see weight-loss pills as a way to reach patients reluctant to use injections, and the two companies are racing to expand the reach of medicines that have already transformed obesity treatment and reshaped the broader pharmaceutical industry.

Speaking in Beijing on his first visit to China since taking over as chief executive in August, Doustdar said the company would submit oral Wegovy for approval "very soon," adding that a filing was likely within a few months.

Competition in the Chinese market has intensified in recent years, with Pfizer (PFE) and domestic companies including Innovent Biologics entering the obesity drug space. Doustdar said he expected additional competition from generic manufacturers beginning in the second quarter of next year.

The Chinese patent covering semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo's Wegovy and Ozempic franchises, expired in March, although the company retains regulatory data protection until early next year.

Doustdar argued that manufacturing scale would prove a significant barrier to entry for rivals seeking to launch competing oral obesity treatments, saying few competitors had the capabilities to match Novo's production capacity.

Novo has already secured early approval for its Wegovy pill in the U.S. and Britain, launching the product in the American market this year. Lilly moved quickly to follow, winning U.S. approval in April for orforglipron, its own oral obesity drug.

In China, however, Lilly has moved first. The company said in March that it had submitted a marketing application for once-daily orforglipron to Chinese regulators at the end of 2025. Both drugs belong to the GLP-1 class of medicines that has come to dominate the obesity treatment market.

The overall size of China's weight-loss drug market remains difficult to gauge, with companies including Innovent and Lilly declining to disclose sales figures. Sales of GLP-1 treatments in China through the e-commerce platforms of Alibaba and JD.com totaled approximately 1.4bn yuan ($207mn) in the first quarter, according to estimates from Jefferies.