Novo Nordisk weight loss drug Wegovy approved in China

Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy has been approved for sale in China, opening the door to a huge market in which obesity rates have more than doubled among adults in the past two decades.

The Danish pharmaceutical company said on Tuesday that Wegovy “has been approved in China for long-term weight management” for overweight and obese people. It did not say when the product would launch and declined to share details on pricing or the volume of Wegovy it would supply to the region.

Shares in Copenhagen-listed Novo Nordisk were up 2.1 per cent following the announcement, which was initially shared on the company’s account on Chinese social media platform WeChat.

Novo Nordisk has been investing heavily in its manufacturing capacity to meet soaring demand for both Wegovy and Ozempic, which is designed to treat diabetes. It said on Monday that it would invest $4.1bn in expanding its US manufacturing operations in North Carolina.

The popularity of the drugs has helped make Novo Nordisk Europe’s most valuable company, with a market valuation of $630.5bn, even as it has struggled to meet huge demand for its products, at times prioritising the supply of the drugs to existing patients rather than new users.

But semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic, will lose exclusivity in China in 2026, potentially limiting the sales that the Danish drugmaker could generate in the country. Chinese drugmakers have begun to develop alternative weight-loss drugs that analysts expect could be on the market by 2026.

At an investor day in March, Novo Nordisk said the China region, which it defines as mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, was likely to be an area of growth for the company, with the number of people living with obesity expected to rise by 161 per cent to 479mn people between 2021 and 2045.

Ozempic, a product designed for type-2 diabetes but frequently used off-label for weight loss, has been sold by the company since 2021 in China. Novo Nordisk has a production site in Tianjin, China’s seventh-largest city, and employs more than 6,000 people in the country in manufacturing, research and commercial roles.