COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Lilly will launch its Mounjaro obesity drug in Denmark next week, the U.S. drugmaker said on Thursday, bringing competition to the home country of its biggest weight-loss rival, Danish pharmaceuticals group Novo Nordisk.
The two drugmakers are the first-to-market with highly effective obesity treatments, a booming business that could be worth $150 billion in annual global sales by the early 2030s, according to some analysts.
In Denmark, Lilly is up against Novo whose drug Wegovy has seen a global whirlwind success that made the Danish group Europe’s most valuable company and boosted the national economy.
Both Mounjaro and Wegovy are cleared for weight loss in combination with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity, and come with added health benefits alleviating many problems linked to excess weight.
The price would be roughly 2,200 Danish crowns ($318.5) per month, a Lilly spokesperson told Reuters.
The monthly price of Wegovy varies from 1,313 crowns for a starter dose, to 2,353 crowns for the maximum maintenance dose, according to the website of the Danish medicines agency.
The number of users of Wegovy in Denmark increased from around 60,000 in January to 90,000 in August, which corresponded with 713,950 injection pens in the first eight months of this year, data from the Danish Health Data Authority showed.
In Denmark, a country of roughly 6 million people, around 19% of the population has a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above.
The public health care system does not generally reimburse weight-loss drugs and the country’s largest private health insurer, which covers roughly half the population, stopped paying for such drugs in 2023 due to high demand.
Mounjaro was launched in Sweden and Finland last week and will soon be launched in Norway, the spokesperson said. Elsewhere in Europe, the drug has also been introduced in the UK, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and Germany.
($1 = 6.9076 Danish crowns)
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Louise Breusch Rasmussen; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
