Diabetes

Months on from penning a landmark commercial and manufacturing agreement for GLP-1 assets with Metsera, Amneal says it is happy with how the partnership is shaping up.

South Africa’s Aspen Pharma has discussed the “significant progress” it believes it has made in GLP-1s, with an eye on rolling-out semaglutide in non-US and non-EU markets beginning as early as 2026.

Sanofi has bolstered its insulin offerings by bagging the first US FDA approval for a rapid-acting insulin aspart biosimilar, leaving several would-be sponsors in its wake.

Innogen is hoping the approval of its once-weekly GLP-1 drug Diabegone will allow it to chip away at Ozempic’s dominance in the Chinese diabetes market.

As Torrent joins Indian majors with plans to launch semaglutide in India and Brazil post patent expiry, market access topics like price and demand come up for discussion. Meanwhile, the supply chain is seen overcoming shortages

Boehringer Ingelheim’s sale of three diabetes brands in India, with the same composition as Jardiance, Jardiance Met and Glyxambi, to Torrent comes ahead of the expiry of the Indian patent for empagliflozin. A launch for other indications is also expected.

Hua Medicine’s HuaTangNing (dorzagliatin), the world’s first approved glucokinase activator, has apparently fallen short of restoring Bayer to its pre-2020 frontrunner position in China’s market for oral type 2 diabetes drugs, and the two companies' alliance is now set to be dissolved.

The agency reaffirmed support for a hemoglobin A1C endpoint for glycemic control in type 1 diabetes, but the diabetic ketoacidosis risk with sotagliflozin is so concerning that it is looking for additional benefits in patients with chronic kidney disease, a targeted subpopulation.

Indian firms Lupin and Aurobindo lay out global plans for GLP-1 agonists, as Aurobindo also updates on its biosimilar ambitions as they report results for fiscal Q2.

Some panelists favored use in T1D patients with mild chronic kidney disease, even though that was not the original indication Lexicon proposed, which was rejected in an 11-3 vote.