CEO David Ricks can see the companies setting up tents at basecamp behind Eli Lilly in an attempt to get a foothold of the obesity market. But Lilly’s already been to the summit and is coming back down for another trip.
“Our strategy is to comprehensively address this global public health crisis, pursuing opportunities against every rational mechanism, indication and dosage form. We are investing broadly in this disease and now have 11 new molecules currently in the clinic across multiple indications,” said Ricks, speaking on a second-quarter earnings call Thursday.
Lilly is set up to maintain the momentum better than some of the entrants jumping on the obesity bandwagon, Ricks and his executive team argued. The company has invested billions into manufacturing capabilities to support Zepbound and other phase 3 assets like retatrutide, said Patrik Jonsson, chief customer officer and president of Lilly Diabetes & Obesity. That’s something a Big Pharma can do with ease and a smaller company may not be able to across a broad pipeline, he added.
“We’re in position to compete today and tomorrow,” Jonsson said. “All hands on deck on our side.”
As Lilly has found out, the volume for Zepbound has outpaced even them. Fellow obesity leader Novo Nordisk has similarly had similar challenges with semaglutide, marketed as Wegovy for weight loss.
“So of course competitors will come. But there’s a road ahead for all these that the two leading companies have already walked in large part,” Ricks said.
Ricks pointed out that key phase 1 data for tirzepatide arrived in December 2016—eight years ago, which shows how far ahead Lilly is from others that are working through the clinic with unapproved medicines right now.
Lilly is currently running nine obesity-related trials with readouts that will begin mid-next year, according to Ricks. The later-stage pipeline is also smattered with additional indications being explored for Zepbound, known as Wegovy for diabetes and as tirzepatide for the active ingredient.
While investors have been pouncing on any shred of data, even from phase 1, Lilly Chief Scientific Officer and President of Lilly Research Laboratories Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., cautioned against jumping to conclusions—as it took a long time to build up tirzepatide into the juggernaut it is today.
“I know investors have gotten excited about various releases of phase 1 data. But it’s still a challenging space to develop drugs. And we usually wait until we’ve seen pretty robust phase 2 data before we get too excited about a particular molecule,” Skovronsky said.
He continued: “A lot of what we’ve seen from different companies will probably sort out as we get to see phase 2 data—which molecules make it and which have the right profile and which don’t. But I wouldn’t be expecting 100% success here.”
For oral medications, which is expected to be the next big thing in obesity, Ricks said target engagement and safety will be key, and he said Lilly has the most advanced program.