David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…I saw an ad that said, ask your doctor if Victoza is right for you, so I'm asking you if it's right for me. We should say, everything in healthcare has a modifier of sometimes. Everything I just said is true sometimes. It's not always true that the doctor has complete control to prescribe off-label, but I think it's a reasonable way to think about it. David, it's not that effective. You can lose weight taking Victoza, but it's not necessarily a life-changing thing. Right. At the end of 2013, Novo submits Saxenda, the official weight loss version of liraglutide, to the FDA and EU for approval. It's a slightly higher dose version, and expectations are at an all time high for this. Novo's market cap has already been running. It now passes $100 billion on the anticipation of Saxenda's performance, and it's not that big of a hit. It's a hit. It has good sales. To be fair, I think a large amount of the early adopter GLP-1 weight loss market was already just using Victoza. Clearly, a lot of the Victoza revenue was actually Saxenda revenue that was pulled forward, so to speak. But Ben, like you're saying, the big issue is that even with the slightly higher dose of liraglutide, it yields long term on average across populations about an 8% BMI reduction, which is meaningful, but it's not that meaningful. In research, it is crazy. I heard over and over again, physicians and other people in the industry echo this magical 10% weight loss reduction number. There was always this belief in the industry that if something could reliably help you lose 10% or more, then it tips. Saxenda just didn't get there.…

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