Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: So we spoke in December after you were granted US
Speaker 2: approval to launch your OBC pill this month in January,
Speaker 2: the first drugmaker to do so. I know it's early,
Speaker 2: but what has uptake looked like so far?
Speaker 1: It's been really exciting to launch, and I think when
Speaker 1: you go around this congress and hear the excitement externally
Speaker 1: we are of course objective, but externally everyone being excited
Speaker 1: about it gives you a good feeling. The uptake has
Speaker 1: been good, but it's really early days for me to
Speaker 1: go into the details of it, but it really speaks
Speaker 1: to the fact that we also spoke earlier. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are excited about GOP one
Speaker 1: category weight loss, but did not want to take an injection.
Speaker 1: There's a taboo of injection, there's needle phobia, and they've
Speaker 1: been waiting. So we are super excited that we're finally
Speaker 1: having an offering for this large group of people that
Speaker 1: have been wanting a pill.
Speaker 2: And critically, you have a couple months here when it
Speaker 2: comes to Eli Lily, they're slated to get approval sometime
Speaker 2: in the next couple months. How do you prevent your
Speaker 2: patients from switching to Lily's pill, which I understand doesn't
Speaker 2: have exactly the same food restrictions as yours does. Once
Speaker 2: that is on the market.
Speaker 1: A couple of points, when we started actually deciding how
Speaker 1: to go into the oral segment and decided that we
Speaker 1: should put our protein and peptide encapsulate it and take
Speaker 1: that route, most people thought that this is going to
Speaker 1: be impossible. Scientifically, you don't find examples of the protein
Speaker 1: large protein peptides going inside orally and not being dissolved
Speaker 1: by the enzymes of your stomach. We were able to
Speaker 1: do that magically, I would say, But now, of course
Speaker 1: we're getting the fruits of that. We have for the
Speaker 1: first time the efficacy of our pill at sixteen point
Speaker 1: six percent when you take the drug being exactly equal
Speaker 1: to the pen version of it, the vigo vi pen
Speaker 1: again at sixteen point six percent, That of course is
Speaker 1: second to none. When you take a look at the
Speaker 1: data from all of our competition in late pipeline or
Speaker 1: early pipeline, no one has that efficacy. That I think
Speaker 1: is a big leap that we will talk to. Not
Speaker 1: least of course VGOVI pill also have the CV benefits
Speaker 1: that our competition does not have at this point, so
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly grateful for that. Now you talked about restrictions.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of drugs that have restrictions,
Speaker 1: including our own diabetes version of this called Rebulses, where
Speaker 1: we have one and a half million patients on the
Speaker 1: product and not complaining whatsoever about that restrictions. We have
Speaker 1: this simple saying of sip and go. So I'm very
Speaker 1: thankful that we basically have been able to prove that
Speaker 1: on the market with Rebulses, and I'm very optimistic that
Speaker 1: vigovi pill will show the same.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about production of the pill,
Speaker 2: because you think about the amount that you need of
Speaker 2: the drug ingredient for the pill versus the shots. How
Speaker 2: profit is it to make and produce the pills versus
Speaker 2: the shots.
Speaker 1: Well, if you could not make any financial gains or
Speaker 1: profits out of it, then we probably would not have
Speaker 1: launched it. So we have made a couple of things
Speaker 1: very clear. Again, it comes back to the skepticism that
Speaker 1: growing their peptide route orally is the wrong one because
Speaker 1: no one else has done it. That people first and
Speaker 1: foremost started telling us it's not scientifically possible. When we
Speaker 1: prove that right, then they started focusing well can you
Speaker 1: produce enough of it? And is it profitable? And we
Speaker 1: basically tell people that we have produced more than enough
Speaker 1: of it, that's why we're launching it, and that we
Speaker 1: are actually going to make a decent business out of this.
Speaker 1: So I'm very optimistic about this pill as we go forward.
Speaker 1: And again the single biggest difference, and people have not
Speaker 1: understood that this is not a chemical entity, small molecule
Speaker 1: as almost all pills are. Because of that, you have
Speaker 1: an incredibly potent, effective pill at hand which we have
Speaker 1: uniquely learned how to scale it and of course make
Speaker 1: a decent business out of it.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about pricing as well,
Speaker 2: because you were one of several drug companies that signed
Speaker 2: pricing deals with the White House at the end of
Speaker 2: last year. So you think about medicare you think about Medicaid?
Speaker 2: How much of your obesity business do you think could
Speaker 2: actually come from those two avenues.
Speaker 1: What we have seen recently. Of course, the Lion's share
Speaker 1: of the business still is through the insured channels, and
Speaker 1: I think for a long time it probably remains that.
Speaker 1: But you have also seen that unfortunately through the insurance channels,
Speaker 1: even though the sheer number of people that have insurances
Speaker 1: are large, So fifty five million people are insured with
Speaker 1: our Vigovi product. Because of all the restrictions that are
Speaker 1: put upon them, the pre authorizations and basically a lot
Speaker 1: of questionnaires that they need to fill, many of these
Speaker 1: patients preferred to go through the cash channels and pay
Speaker 1: amount of money albeit a bit larger than their copy,
Speaker 1: but source the product from the cash channel. So we
Speaker 1: have seen both for us as well as our competition,
Speaker 1: that the growth recently has been through the cash channels.
Speaker 1: We will work very well with both of these channels.
Speaker 1: We will continue, of course working incredibly tight with our
Speaker 1: partners in the in short section, but continue to develop
Speaker 1: the cash channels as we do think that this is
Speaker 1: the future in many ways.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting when you talk about, you know, the
Speaker 2: growth coming from the cash channel, are you able to
Speaker 2: quantify that, you know the type of numbers that you
Speaker 2: are seeing.
Speaker 1: Well, last year we had basically had ten percent of
Speaker 1: our sales coming through the cash channels, and that we
Speaker 1: publicly said it's not good enough for our competition. I
Speaker 1: believe the number was around thirty percent or so, So
Speaker 1: we have set ourselves the goal to increase the number
Speaker 1: and go forward. But we also recognize that many patients
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want to come to your own website. We
Speaker 1: have a website called Noble Care Pharmacy dot com, which
Speaker 1: is good and now we have revamped it and I'm
Speaker 1: very proud of it. But the truth is that some
Speaker 1: people actually like to source the product from Row, from
Speaker 1: Life MD, from Weight Watchers, from Amazon Pharmacy, and we
Speaker 1: should be able to basically allow them rather than try
Speaker 1: to force them to only come through our own channel.
Speaker 1: So what you have seen from our company over the
Speaker 1: last five six months is major number of partnerships with
Speaker 1: all of these players so that patients don't need to
Speaker 1: move away from wherever they are, will join them and
Speaker 1: meet them where they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fascinating, especially when it comes to the telehealth platforms.
Speaker 2: It feels like that's becoming ubiquitous in American life. I
Speaker 2: do want to talk a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 2: potential catalysts from here. Obviously the pill in that approval
Speaker 2: was a big one, but you think about the readout
Speaker 2: that you're seeing when it comes to redefine for that
Speaker 2: is cagrisama versus set bound. My understanding that's due in
Speaker 2: the first quarter. What's your consonance level as you're heading
Speaker 2: into that.
Speaker 1: We have we have two trials looking forward to. There's
Speaker 1: redefined four and Redefine eleven. I would say. On redefined four,
Speaker 1: we are trying to get non inferiority, so so that's
Speaker 1: really important to to to speak to. On redefined eleven,
Speaker 1: we have re changed our methodology and redesigned the trial
Speaker 1: a bit differently. It's here with American patients only, and
Speaker 1: we are asking the patients to tight trate, albeit at
Speaker 1: their own pace. So so I'm a little bit looking
Speaker 1: more forward to redefine eleven, I would say. But but
Speaker 1: on both of those we will once again prove that
Speaker 1: Tagrick Semma is the next generation of the product, and
Speaker 1: and it's going to have not only a very decent efficacy,
Speaker 1: much more than what we see in the market currently today,
Speaker 1: but also with a very reasonable tolerability, which I think
Speaker 1: comes from the amline molecule that really has proven to
Speaker 1: be a fantastic molecule in weight management when especially comes
Speaker 1: to tolerability.
Speaker 2: So redefine four, but especially redefine eleven, we'll be keeping
Speaker 2: an eye out for that. I do have to ask
Speaker 2: you a little bit when it comes to the politics
Speaker 2: of it all. We know the President Donald Trump isn't
Speaker 2: a feud if you want to call it, with Denmark
Speaker 2: over Greenland. Of course, you are based in Denmark. How
Speaker 2: do you make sure that what's going on at the
Speaker 2: government level doesn't impact your own dealings with the Trump administration?
Speaker 1: So I learned a long time ago that one of
Speaker 1: the benefits of working in the pharmaceutical industry is you
Speaker 1: could basically tell both sides of the of the of
Speaker 1: the politics that I'm here for the patients. My job
Speaker 1: is to put the patients at the center of everything
Speaker 1: that I do, and patients are my politics. And interesting enough,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you're the right side or the
Speaker 1: left side of the political spectrum. You understand that because
Speaker 1: both sides often agree that improving health especially at scales
Speaker 1: like we do, is the most important thing. So I
Speaker 1: will leave the politics to the politicians, and my job
Speaker 1: is to really focus around expanding access to healthcare, which
Speaker 1: my company is synonymous for.
Speaker 2: Patients are your politics. I like that. I do want
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about AI. We are sitting
Speaker 2: here having this conversation in San Francisco, and AI and
Speaker 2: its potential when it comes to the health industry has
Speaker 2: definitely emerged as a theme. You think about Eli Lilly,
Speaker 2: the partnerships that they've signed with in Video, the news
Speaker 2: from this conference that in Video will invest a billion
Speaker 2: dollars in developing a lab with Eli Lilly. How are
Speaker 2: you thinking about AI when it comes to your business
Speaker 2: and could you anticipate Novo signing some sort of similar
Speaker 2: partnership with one of these AI companies.
Speaker 1: I would say that when you think about technology as
Speaker 1: a whole and pharmaceuticals, the pharma industry has been a
Speaker 1: bit conservative adapting technology more much less than some of
Speaker 1: the other, of course industries that you see predominantly, maybe
Speaker 1: because as humans we have shied away about sharing our
Speaker 1: health related data as much as we talk about where
Speaker 1: we ate and where we walked on Instagram or Facebook,
Speaker 1: coming to discussing our health issues has been a little
Speaker 1: bit more reserved. That is changing. I think an AI
Speaker 1: is really becoming an interesting topic and I have no
Speaker 1: doubt AI will answer many of the questions we have
Speaker 1: not been able to answer. If you think about our industry,
Speaker 1: it's a lot about trials and errors and really trying
Speaker 1: to figure out will this work or not. With the
Speaker 1: help of AI, I think those answers will be addressed
Speaker 1: much differently than we have been able to do without them.
Speaker 1: So I think from discovery to research, AI is going
Speaker 1: to play a major role in understanding science and bringing
Speaker 1: molecules and drugs faster to markets. But also when you
Speaker 1: get into the regulatory front and being able to file
Speaker 1: for approvals, I think you can also shorten the time.
Speaker 1: So my hope is in years to come you will
Speaker 1: see from the onset of an idea from a scientist
Speaker 1: to a placement of a product in a pharmacy, you
Speaker 1: will see a shorter time horizon than today's ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen years, which ultimately will benefit the patience