The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved this Wednesday a new pill with the GLP-1 peptide that helps lose weight. The pill is from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and is called Foundayo.
It is intended to be consumed daily and is the second oral drug of this type to be approved for sale in the United States, after the pill version of Wegovy, from Novo Nordisk, was approved in December.
Foundayo will be available in six different doses so that patients can start at the lowest and increase, depending on their needs and side effects. It can be taken at any time of the day regardless of whether it is with food or not, unlike Wegovy, whose pill must be taken first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.
The lowest dose of Foundayo is expected to cost $149 per month for those who buy it directly, a similar price to Wegovy’s pill, while the highest doses are close to $399.
It’s unclear how many private insurers will cover the drug. Under a Trump administration plan, Medicare could begin covering it for some patients as early as this summer, with copays as low as $50 a month.
With this Wednesday’s FDA approval, the market for GLP-1 drugs continues to expand, offering the possibility of greater weight loss or taking the drug in different doses or in different ways.
So far clinical studies on Foundayo show that people lose 12.4% of their body weight on average taking the highest dose for up to 72 weeks, a change similar to that obtained with the Wegovy pill but less than that seen with the injectable versions of Wegovy or Zepbound.
However, these two drugs are not directly comparable because there have been no medical analyzes evaluating how a specific group of people reacts to injected GLP-1 versus its pill version.
Eli Lilly also has another GLP-1 drug in development. It is called Retatrutide and in clinical analyzes so far it has been shown to be even more effective than semaglutide or trizepartide in promoting weight loss.
Jody Dushay, an endocrinologist and obesity specialist at Harvard Medical School, said many of her patients who have switched from the injected form of GLP-1 to the pill form with Wegovy have complained that they don’t lose as much weight that way.
“It remains to be seen what these pills will accomplish,” said Dushay, who has no affiliations with Ei Lilly or Novo Nordisk. “I feel like a 12% loss is small compared to what you see with Wegovy or Zepbound.”
