Pfizer had Ozempic 40 years ago

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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… and cut funding to the research project.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/25/opinion/ozempic-weight-loss-pfizer-diabetes.html

{{ In 1990, reviewing Flier’s team’s results, Pfizer gave the researchers one year to develop a non-injectable delivery system that might justify the expense of developing an alternative to insulin — a quixotically short timeline that effectively doomed the project, forestalling work on some of the obvious next research steps.

From that point, Flier guesses that the next major breakthrough, identifying the enzyme that naturally degrades GLP-1 in minutes in order to develop a mechanism to counteract or stall that effect, would have taken only a few months. But “it wasn’t a sure thing,” he acknowledges, and “it’s almost always longer than you would imagine.” It took 15 years for Exendin-4, which was isolated from Gila monster venom in 1990, to make it to market as the first GLP-1 therapy, Exenatide. The original patent Flier and his colleagues licensed from Massachusetts General, which eventually passed to Novo Nordisk, didn’t yield an F.D.A.-approved drug until 2010. }}

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The interesting thing better doctors would prescribe Metformin first. If the patient could tolerate Metformin, then Ozempic would not be used. It is not as safe as Metformin. The efficacy is less than Metformin.

Now at 3 times the dosing Ozempic is used in huge quantities. What could go wrong?

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I seriously doubt it. Two different drugs with different modes of action, and aiming for a different end results.

Metformin is generally prescribed for folk who’ve eaten themselves sick and cannot manage to eat themselves back to healthy. I could see judicious use of these newer meds enabling folk to avoid the need for Metformin in the first place.

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That last idea is very possible.

The older ideas are what I expressed. They are getting turned inside out.

The irony is Metformin was prescribed prior to avoid the side effects. Now at 3 times the dosage the new drugs are doing a different job.

And yes the better doctors are setting aside the side effect concerns.

Metformin can also cause weight loss.