Product

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the second GLP-1 pill to treat obesity, this time from drugmaker Eli Lilly.

The new pill, Foundayo, is taken once a day and will compete with the pill form of Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk, which was approved by the FDA in December.

Patients now have a choice of pills instead of injections from both makers of the leading obesity medicines. The pill options could appeal to many patients. But the cost of the drugs and limits on insurance coverage remain obstacles.

The agency approved Lilly’s obesity pill on a fast track for drugs that the FDA deems a national priority. The decision to approve Foundayo took 50 days, the agency said, and is the fastest for a brand-new kind of drug since 2002.

Even though is the same company behind Zepbound, the blockbuster injectable obesity medicine, decided not to take Zepbound’s main ingredient and make it in pill form. Instead, the company developed a new ingredient, known generically as orforglipron, that’s not a peptide like the injectable drugs, but acts like one.

That means the active ingredient is easier for the body to absorb in pill form, says  chief scientific and product officer, Daniel Skovronsky.

“We’ve created a small molecule chemical which gets in your body very well,” Skovronsky says. “It can mimic the effects of the peptide and can be taken more conveniently any time of day without any food or water restrictions.”

Its competitor, the Wegovy pill, is a peptide. Peptides are small chains of amino acids. The Wegovy pill has the same active ingredient as the injection, with an added ingredient so it can be absorbed before the peptide is broken down by acid in the stomach. But, unlike Foundayo, the Wegovy pill has to be taken on an empty stomach, and the patient has to fast for 30 minutes for it to work.