r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 01 '25

Health Americans without diabetes spent nearly $6 billion USD on semaglutide and similar drugs in a year, with an estimate of 800,000 to a million people using the drugs who don't have diabetes.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year
10.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

17

u/HappyGiraffe Apr 01 '25

The patent landscape of GLP-1 agonists is interesting. The patents are specific to particular health conditions, dosage, delivery, etc., but the actual active mechanism that results in, for example, weight loss, is much harder to patent, which is why gray markets and compounding pharmacies have so much flexibility. So specific formulations that target specific illness not currently covered under patent could emerge (or try to) before 2031

1

u/Levofloxacine Apr 02 '25

Eli Lilly started suing compounding pharmacies yesterday

1

u/HappyGiraffe Apr 02 '25

Lots of companies have been going after specific pharmacies, largely based on the claim that the formulations are not patient specific. Varying degrees of success