A new GLP-1 pill—that's about as effective as Ozempic and Wegovy

This New Pill Could Rival Ozempic and Wegovy—Will It Make Weight Loss Drugs More Accessible? But will it make GLP-1 medications more accessible? Here's what to know

A new GLP-1 pill—that's about as effective as Ozempic and Wegovy—could be on the market soon

Eli Lilly plans to seek approval for a new GLP-1 pill called orforglipron.
Clinical trial results show the new pill is about as effective as certain injectable GLP-1 drugs.
Experts say an oral GLP-1 pill would be more accessible, since it doesn't require refrigeration or injections, but it's not clear if it'll bring prices down.

A daily pill from Eli Lilly could be as effective for weight loss and blood sugar control as injections like Ozempic or Wegovy, according to April data from a Phase 3 clinical trial.

The glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) oral medication, called orforglipron, would allow people to reap the benefits from these blockbuster weight loss drugs without injections. However, experts say it’s not yet clear whether orforglipron or other oral GLP-1 medications would actually make these drugs less expensive.

According to an Eli Lilly spokesperson, the drugmaker plans to submit its orforglipron data for approval for weight management by the end of 2025. It expects to submit the drug for approval as a treatment for type 2 diabetes next year.

How Does Orforglipron Compare to Other GLP-1s?

Though it joins a crowded landscape of GLP-1 drugs, orforglipron is distinct from other options.

Unlike Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro, Victoza, and other popular GLP-1s, orforglipron is a daily pill, not an injection.

“[It’s] more discreet than taking an injection out of your fridge,” Rekha Kumar, MD, an endocrinologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, told Health. Taking a pill could be helpful for people who may not feel comfortable storing injectable medications in a shared fridge, or for people who don’t like needles, she added.

Orforglipron is also structurally different from Rybelsus, the only currently available GLP-1 pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Rybelsus, Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide pill, is approved for diabetes treatment, but is often used off-label to help people lose weight. Like GLP-1 injections, Rybelsus is a peptide (or protein) treatment, which means it's made from a string of complex molecules.

But these peptides are part of the reason why GLP-1s are currently very expensive—they “make the existing GLP-1s more difficult to manufacture, store, and ship,” said Kumar.

However, orforglipron is a small-molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist, not a peptide GLP-1. Rather than mimicking a protein, small-molecule drugs are tiny and light, and penetrate cells more easily.

Orforglipron may also be slightly easier to use, and may give “patients more flexibility,” said Kumar.

“There are a lot of stipulations around how to take [Rybelsus]—having it with food or other medications could affect the absorption or effectiveness of it,” she explained. “You can only have four sips of water while taking it and you have to take it on an empty stomach.”

But this new GLP-1 pill can be taken with any amount of water, any time of the day, and with or without food.

Is Orforglipron Effective?

In Eli Lilly’s most recent Phase 3 clinical trial, patients who took the highest dose of orforglipron (36 milligrams) for 40 weeks:

Lost an average of 16 pounds. That amounts to about 8% of their body weight.
Saw lower blood glucose levels. Participants’ A1C levels dropped by 1.3–1.6%.

This means orforglipron stacks up well against injectable semaglutide.

In a Phase 3 trial of Wegovy, Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide injection, people lost an average of about 10% of their body weight. And studies have shown that Ozempic (another semaglutide injection) can lower blood sugar levels by between 1.45% or 1.55%, depending on the dose.

However, research has shown that Eli Lilly’s injectable tirzepatide (also known as Zepbound or Mounjaro) is more effective for weight loss than semaglutide, meaning the medication is likely more effective than orforglipron, too.

What Are the Side Effects?

In terms of side effects, orforglipron is again mostly comparable with other injectable and oral semaglutide drugs. Patients mostly experience gastrointestinal side effects, including:

Diarrhea
Nausea
Constipation
Vomiting

Will Orforglipron Make GLP-1s Cheaper or Easier to Access?

Costs could fall if orforglipron gets FDA approval, but it’s not totally clear how the drugs might affect the weight management industry overall.

Costs could be lower for oral GLP-1 pills because:

They don’t include the high cost of making peptides.
They don’t require refrigeration during transportation and storage.

However, the actual production costs for drugs like orforglipron could be the same or higher as compared to injectables. It’s easier for the body to absorb injected medications as compared to oral ones, so the latter require more active ingredients to have similar effects (leading to higher costs).

The drug market also makes cost and access uncertain, too.

So far, Novo Nordisk is the only company with a daily oral GLP-1 pill, and Eli Lilly could soon follow suit with orforglipron. But these two companies already hold a duopoly on the semaglutide and tirzepatide market.

“If either of those come out with a daily oral pill, you still only have two companies,” M. Christopher Roebuck, PhD, a health economist and founder of health care insights company RxEconomics, told Health.

But more products on the market could still make cheaper GLP-1s a reality.

The new alternatives could inspire people who were initially deterred by GLP-1 injectables’ high price tag to give these medications a try, Roebuck said. This could, perhaps, provide an incentive for these companies to lower costs so they can reach people who weren’t willing to, or couldn’t, pay for Ozempic, Mounjaro, or similar drugs in the past.

“The people who took the injectables in the first couple years they came out are typically the people who are willing to pay the higher cost,” Roebuck said. “Now you want to attract the people who are lower down on the incentive-to-pay curve.”

Still, Roebuck said he doesn’t expect prices to come down significantly until there’s more competition from “another company or two,” he explained. Pfizer was working on its own oral GLP-1 drug, called danuglipron, but decided to discontinue development last month.

For now, the Eli Lilly spokesperson told Health that it’s too early to speculate on how much orforglipron might cost and whether insurance providers will cover it. Coverage for GLP-1 products already on the market varies widely.

Edited by Health, where she edits and publishes news articles on trending health and wellness topics. Her work has been featured in The Heights, an independent student newspaper at Boston College, and Minnesota Monthly." tabindex="0" data-inline-tooltip="true"> Julia Landwehr

Julia Landwehr Julia is the associate news editor for Health, where she edits and publishes news articles on trending health and wellness topics. Her work has been featured in The Heights, an independent student newspaper at Boston College, and Minnesota Monthly. learn more Read more: