STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about Novo suing Lilly over ‘deceptive’ ads, a fugitive’s secret life in biotech, and more
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- Novo Nordisk sued Eli Lilly in federal court in New Jersey, alleging Lilly ran a 'deceptive' ad campaign using 'outdated clinical trials' to make its obesity and diabetes drugs appear more effective.
- Novo Nordisk claimed Lilly compared the highest doses of its weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro against lower doses of Novo's Wegovy and Ozempic, and said the nationally broadcast ads — also running on TikTok and Facebook — are 'causing irreparable harm.'
- The Rare Disease Company Coalition met with the White House Office of Management and Budget last week to lobby for excluding rare disease treatments from two Medicare drug-pricing pilot programs tied to President Trump's most-favored nation pricing policy.
- The two pilots under OMB review are the GUARD Model, covering Part D retail drugs, and the GLOBE Model, covering Part B physician-administered drugs, both designed to align U.S. brand-name drug prices with those in other wealthy countries.
- The lawsuit marks a new escalation in one of the pharmaceutical industry's most intense rivalries as both companies compete for share in the fast-growing GLP-1 market for weight loss and diabetes.
Why it matters: The Novo-Lilly suit targets how the two companies position competing GLP-1 drugs — Zepbound and Mounjaro versus Wegovy and Ozempic — in national advertising, and a ruling could force ad pullbacks or retractions that reshape consumer perception in a market worth billions. Separately, the rare-disease lobbying push could carve out exemptions from Trump's most-favored nation pricing pilots, shielding high-cost orphan drugs from the steepest price cuts.
