David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. Why is today in the early 2020's the moment in human history for these new GLP-1 drugs? The crazy thing is, Semaglutide, the molecule in Ozempic and Wegovy, was pioneered back by Novo Nordisk with the first trial in 2008 for Type 2 Diabetes treatment. It was built on research started in the early 90s. But here we are in 2023, almost three decades later, talking about it as a weight loss drug that magically appeared out of nowhere, or that's at least the public perception of it. Incredibly, the fact that GLP-1 drugs could be used to reduce food intake was actually discovered way back in the mid 90s in the first scientific publication about it, but only in 2021 did we finish the clinical trials that truly show how effective it can be. As we'll see, that's just the tip of the iceberg. This company is 100 years old. The history goes way back and is way more interesting than I think, just about anybody knows. Yup. Pharmaceuticals is without a doubt the most complex industry that we have ever studied. To fully understand Novo Nordisk, we need to go back to a simpler time before the Food and Drug Administration, before all this industry consolidation, healthcare oligopolies, and before there were treatments for everything we take for granted today, antibiotics, vaccines for polio, tetanus, measles, mumps, you name it, that is where we will start our story. If you want to know every time an episode drops, you can sign up at acquired.fm/email. These will also contain hints at what the next episode will be and follow up facts from previous episodes when we learn new information. Come talk about this episode with us after listening at acquired.fm/slack. If you want more from David and I, you should check out our second show, ACQ2, where we interview founders, investors, and experts often as follow-ups to the topics on these episodes. With that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. David, where are we starting our story?…

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