Sanofi might not be done with the 'weight loss space' after all.
That unsurprising observation -- a $100 billion drug market produces its own gravitational field, exerting power over a massive body of economic systems that sit next to it -- comes from Endpoints News in its coverage of Sanofi's presentation at #JPM24.
"After its own GLP-1 drug failed a mid-stage trial almost half a decade ago, the French drugmaker missed out on what has become the biggest new drug category of the decade. On Wednesday at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, top executives at the company said they could look at potential next-generation products in the years to come that could be more targeted or have better side effects.
“There are genetic signals on where to dig for obesity drugs 2.0,” Sanofi’s head of R&D Houman Ashrafian said. That could include better identifying patients who will respond to more targeted drugs, work to improve the treatments’ side effects, or exploring drugs that could help underweight or frail patients.
That would fit with a broader trend by other pharma companies that haven’t yet cracked into the blockbuster market now dominated by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly and Company. Almost all see the demand for weight loss product to continue to grow, with plenty of room for more players and new, more advanced treatments."
It's not just "demand", it's hyper-demand.
And it presents PhRMA with a unique opportunity to invent leverage around the "value" of GLP-1s, to power earnings not just from a 'drug market' alone, but the wealth of an entire nation.
Just ask Nestlé / Nestlé Health Science, which said it was working on 'companion products' to accompany drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. Where the rest of the food market is struggling is navigating the 'transition space' to new era, in #positioning strategy for the world of GLP-1s.
Because it's hard re-engineering a plane into a helicopter while in flight.
So the default is to rally around the past and defend the economic system (and career path) that has made you successful so far. In the case of the food industry, it's a commercial model worth around $2 trillion in annual revenue in the United States alone.
How long that model lasts is another question.
Greater attention to processing marks a major new challenge for food makers, writes Jesse Newman here. "Makers of goods from ice cream to pasta sauce are stepping up lobbying, pushing back as the U.S. government probes the health effects of heavily processed food.
It is a new front in a struggle that could reshape America’s approach to nutrition and threaten profits for companies behind foods throughout much of the supermarket."
Perhaps next year at J.P. Morgan, we'll see a presentation with the food market interoperating with the drug market as a single economic system on the real "weight loss space".
#ThinkEcosystems
International Culinary Innovator | Leadership | Food & Beverage | Consumer Focused | Ingredients | Food Service/CPG/Retail | Creator of Rapid-Fire Programme & Eat the Streets
2moPepetides in better for you bars, cereal and confections is a great launch pad.IRCA Group #eatthestreets