Credit: Shutterstock
U.S. workers who are struggling with diabetes or obesity might soon start booking trips to Canada.
Semaglutide — the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk's Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus weight-loss drugs — will lose patent protection in that country at the end of 2026, and the GLP-1 agonist will also lack patent protection in 159 other countries, according to a new, widely read working paper by a team of researchers led by Dr. Jacob Levi of the NHS Royal Free Hospital Trust in London.
About 84% of the obese people in the world live in countries that will have no patent protection for semaglutide in 2027, the researchers note.
The researchers came up with generic semaglutide production cost estimates by looking at data on shipments of semaglutide to and from India for November 2024 through November 2025.
Based on the semaglutide import and export records for India, the annual cost of producing enough generic injectable semaglutide doses for one person for a year will probably range from $28 to $140, according to the researchers.
That means the monthly production costs would be $2.33 to $11.67 per month.
The cost of producing enough generic semaglutide pills for one patient could be $186 to $380 per year, or $15.50 to $31.67 per month.
If semaglutide really turns out to be effective at controlling obesity and the complications of obesity over the long term, and it turns out to be safe enough, "lower prices through generic access could enable earlier intervention for obesity, integration into primary care, and a shift from treating advanced metabolic complications toward preventing long-term morbidity," the researchers write in the paper.
The researchers note that public health teams will have to continue to watch to see how safe semaglutide is, how long the weight-loss effects last and how well the drug prevents and controls weight-related health problems.
What it means: In the short run, the expiration of semaglutide patent protection in Canada might increase pressure on federal regulators to make it easier for people to import prescription drugs, and it might increase pressure on employer plan sponsors to help plan participants import drugs from other countries.
In the long run, the expiration of semaglutide patent protection could be that taking semaglutide or similar drugs could become as common for employer plan participants as taking vitamin pills.
The backdrop: GLP-1 agonists cost about $1,000 per person per month as recently as 2023.
Competition and public scrutiny are already starting to pull down full retail prices and the negotiated discounted prices for the drugs.
Novo Nordisk, for example, recently said it will cut the price of Wegovy injections, Ozempic injections and Rybelsus tablets to $675 per month for a typical patient in 2027.
Analysts at Milliman, an actuarial consulting firm, have predicted that the cost of generic semaglutide for U.S. employer plan participants could fall to $50 to $140 per month per prescription user, or $3.17 to $22.88 per month for all plan participants, by 2030.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.