Sydney Lupkin

But unlike Novo Nordisk, which took its injectable active ingredient and made it in pill form with some tweaks, Eli Lilly is doing a whole new active ingredient.

Eli Lilly isn't saying in detail yet, but I can tell you this.

It is not a peptide, so it doesn't have the same restrictions around when you need to take it.

You don't have to take it on an empty stomach and wait half an hour before eating anything.

That seems kind of nice.

Yeah.

But its approval is probably a little ways behind the Novo Nordisk pill.

And maybe here is a good place to spell out just how long the development and approval process for these drugs can be.

Hmm.

I talked to Dr. Max Denning at Eli Lilly, who's a senior medical director at the company, and worked on studying the new pill.

Actually, never.

His job was to design and oversee clinical trials for the pill and then step back.

The trials are double blind, meaning that neither the patient nor the doctors know who got the drug and who got the placebo.

Also, what is this pill called, by the way?

Oh, it's called Orpaglipron, and it did work.

According to one study, patients who took Orpaglipron had 12% average weight loss at its highest dose over 72 weeks.

Cool.

And another study showed it was also effective at lowering patients' A1c, which is a measure of blood sugar.

Novo Nordisk may have a bit of an edge here.

In a study published in September in the New England Journal of Medicine, a 25 mg semaglutide pill led to a 16-17% reduction in weight on average over 64 weeks.