Rac­ing to grab mar­ket share in di­a­betes, No­vo touts its oral semaglu­tide win over Jar­diance in PhI­I­Ia tri­al

No­vo Nordisk’s oral di­a­betes drug semaglu­tide is bear­ing down on one of its ri­vals — out­per­form­ing Jar­diance (em­pagliflozin) in a Phase II­Ia tri­al that could set No­vo up to snatch more of the type 2 di­a­betes mar­ket.

Semaglu­tide, first ap­proved as an in­jectable by the FDA late last year un­der the brand name Ozem­pic, falls in the block­buster class of drugs known as GLP-1s. This lat­est tri­al, called Pi­o­neer 2, put an oral ver­sion of the drug up against Boehringer In­gel­heim and Eli Lil­ly’s Jar­diance, an oral SGLT2-in­hibitor ap­proved back in late 2016. The study pri­mar­i­ly looked at how No­vo’s pill com­pared at in­flu­enc­ing lev­els of gly­cat­ed haemo­glo­bin (HbA1c), an im­por­tant mea­sure for drug­mak­ers hop­ing to low­er the risk of heart fail­ure and oth­er com­pli­ca­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with high blood sug­ar over time.

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