On the heels of We­govy sup­ply trou­bles, No­vo Nordisk is re­port­ing a short­age of its di­a­betes treat­ment Ozem­pic which con­tains the same ac­tive in­gre­di­ent, semaglu­tide.

The com­pa­ny told End­points News in an email last week that it’s ex­pe­ri­enc­ing “in­ter­mit­tent sup­ply dis­rup­tions” for the Ozem­pic pen that de­liv­ers 0.25 and 0.5 mg dos­es of the drug, caused by “in­cred­i­ble de­mand cou­pled with over­all glob­al sup­ply con­straints.” On Dec. 7, the Amer­i­can So­ci­ety of Health-Sys­tem Phar­ma­cists re­port­ed short­ages af­fect­ing both the 0.25 mg or 5 mg dos­es, as well as the 1 mg and 2 mg dos­es us­ing var­i­ous pen in­jec­tors.

“The com­pa­ny is work­ing to re­solve the is­sue by ear­ly-2023,” the ASHP re­port stat­ed.

While No­vo Nordisk de­clined to con­firm whether the short­ages are due to off-la­bel use of Ozem­pic as a weight loss treat­ment, it did ac­knowl­edge that some providers may be pre­scrib­ing the drug for such use.

“While we rec­og­nize that some health­care providers may be pre­scrib­ing Ozem­pic for pa­tients whose goal is to lose weight, it is up to the clin­i­cal dis­cre­tion of each health­care provider to choose the best treat­ment ap­proach for their pa­tients,” the com­pa­ny said in an email.

Ozem­pic was ap­proved in 2017 for pa­tients with Type II di­a­betes, and won a la­bel ex­pan­sion back in 2020 to re­duce the risk of cer­tain heart prob­lems in Type II di­a­betes pa­tients. Its sib­ling drug, We­govy, al­so con­tains sem­ga­lu­tide at a high­er dose. We­govy was ap­proved last June as a once-week­ly in­jec­tion for chron­ic weight man­age­ment in adults, but quick­ly faced “un­prece­dent­ed de­mand” on top of man­u­fac­tur­ing is­sues.

No­vo halt­ed We­govy pro­mo­tions back in March as the com­pa­ny grap­pled with sup­ply is­sues, and promised on its Q3 call that all dose strengths would be avail­able by the end of the year. At the be­gin­ning of the month, ASHP list­ed all We­govy dose strengths as af­fect­ed by a cur­rent short­age.

While Bloomberg re­port­ed ear­li­er to­day that short­ages have led No­vo to de­lay We­govy’s launch in Eu­rope in­to next year, No­vo re­fut­ed those claims, adding that the launch is on track.

“We have com­mu­ni­cat­ed since our sec­ond-quar­ter and third-quar­ter fi­nan­cial re­ports that the first launch­es out­side of the US would hap­pen to­wards the end of 2022. We launched We­govy in Eu­rope (Den­mark) Mon­day, ac­cord­ing to plan,” the com­pa­ny said in an email.

Mean­while, Ozem­pic has tak­en Tik­Tok — and re­port­ed­ly Hol­ly­wood — by storm, with some #ozem­picweight­loss and re­lat­ed videos gath­er­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of views. Aus­tralia’s reg­u­la­to­ry agency, the Ther­a­peu­tic Goods Ad­min­is­tra­tion, di­rect­ly linked an Ozem­pic short­age to off-la­bel use for weight loss ear­li­er this year.

“The world­wide short­age of semaglu­tide start­ed to af­fect Aus­tralia in ear­ly 2022 when No­vo Nordisk couldn’t sup­ply enough Ozem­pic to meet an un­ex­pect­ed in­crease in de­mand due to off-la­bel pre­scrib­ing for weight loss,” the agency said in a state­ment last month.

Ozem­pic raked in about $2.3 bil­lion last quar­ter, up 63% from last year, ac­cord­ing to No­vo’s Q3 re­sults.

“We did an­tic­i­pate that Ozem­pic would grow, just not at the pace that we are see­ing,” the com­pa­ny said in an email. “For pa­tients with Type 2 Di­a­betes, GLP-1 med­i­cines have be­come well-es­tab­lished treat­ments due in part to con­tin­ued in­no­va­tion with­in the class and in­creased uti­liza­tion.”

Fa­ti­ma Stan­ford, an obe­si­ty med­i­cine physi­cian sci­en­tist at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, said some of her pa­tients have strug­gled to fill pre­scrip­tions be­cause of GLP1 short­ages. How­ev­er, she added that off-la­bel use isn’t al­ways what you think.

“It’s im­por­tant to note that 80% of pa­tients with Type II di­a­betes al­so have obe­si­ty. So when we talk about us­ing it off-la­bel for weight reg­u­la­tion, we’re prob­a­bly treat­ing peo­ple that would have need­ed it any­way, for ei­ther weight and or blood sug­ar dys­reg­u­la­tion,” she said.

“No­vo Nordisk does not pro­mote, sug­gest, or en­cour­age off-la­bel use of our med­i­cines and is com­mit­ted to ful­ly com­ply­ing with all ap­plic­a­ble US laws and reg­u­la­tions in the pro­mo­tion of our prod­ucts,” No­vo said in an email. “We trust that health­care providers are eval­u­at­ing a pa­tient’s in­di­vid­ual needs and de­ter­min­ing which med­i­cine is right for that par­tic­u­lar pa­tient.”

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

We now know where Roche’s ex-pharma chief Bill Anderson is going.

German pharma giant Bayer announced Wednesday that Anderson will be taking on the role as CEO, less than six weeks after Anderson stepped down from his perch at Roche as head of the group’s pharmaceutical division.

Roche announced back in December that Anderson would depart on Dec. 31 to “pursue opportunities outside of Roche.” His replacement, Genentech vet and Roche’s current head of global product strategy, Teresa Graham, will start her role in March.

As talk of AI this-and-that gobbles up headline after headline, one Big Pharma is losing its AI leader as she transitions to another drug giant: Iya Khalil will trade in her hat as Novartis’ go-to expert and leader in the space for Merck as VP and head of data, AI and genome sciences next week.

After nearly three years leading the artificial intelligence team at Novartis — as Big Pharma and biotechs alike latch onto the ripening AI-for-drug-discovery mode of operation — Khalil will switch employers to head up a similar post at Merck, where she’ll work out of Cambridge, MA beginning Feb. 13, the company tells Endpoints News.