Novo Nordisk plans to launch “once-in-a-week insulin” by the second quarter of 2025 in India, John C Dawber, managing director of the company’s global business, told News18.com.
In a major breakthrough, Denmark-based Novo Nordisk is working on a once-a-week insulin regime instead of a once-daily dose which can prove to be a game-changer for over 7.7 crore diabetics in India of which 50 lakh patients are insulin dependent.
In an interaction, Dawber, who is corporate vice-president and managing director of Novo Nordisk Global Business services, said the company is expecting positive results from the trial and, in fact, the biggest centres of the trials are placed in India. The drug major is conducting trials at 27 sites involving 217 patients in India.
Vikrant Shrotriya, corporate vice-president and managing director of Novo Nordisk India, said the product is likely to be rolled out by the second quarter of 2025 if everything goes as per plan.
“There is generally a gap of nine months to one year between the launch of the product in the global or the US market and in India — the time which is taken by India’s regulatory procedures. Otherwise, India is a very important part of our global plans,” he said. “After all, I am an Indian and I will bring the company’s best to India,” he added.
The pharma giant celebrated its 100-year anniversary on February 16.
Shrotriya further said the company is also looking forward to launching once a week growth hormone with the objective of treating delayed growth. “Today, the growth hormone is once a day but we are looking forward to once a week.”
However, Shrotriya said it may take one or more than one-and-a-half years apart from other factors such as regulatory timelines.
Cost of insulin is less than a cup of coffee
While addressing the question of reasonable pricing of medicines for Indian patients, he said “the cost of not managing the disease is 10 times more than managing it”.
“…Today the cost of treatment for human insulin is less than a cup of coffee even on the roadside,” Shrotriya said while answering how the company deals with India — a huge price-sensitive market.
“Whenever we launch an innovation, we just have to make sure that we have normal price benchmark across the globe. We take care of pricing and prices are kept within the range that is acceptable for all countries falling into the same economic zone,” he said.
Imagine, he said, somebody who does not manage diabetes. “What will happen to them because of diabetic ketoacidosis or low sugar which lands them in hospital for two days?”
Shrotriya said: “Spending two days in hospital or facing challenges such as foot amputation, kidney collapse, heart disease or stroke due to poorly managed sugar levels will impact people more than the prices of medicines.”
India’s important role in growth plans
Both top officials of the company told News18.com that India plays a crucial role in the company’s growth plans.
“With more than 77 million diabetics, India is an extremely crucial market for us,” Dawber said, adding that India is the second-biggest market in the Asia Pacific for Novo Nordisk commercially after Australia.
He explained that in a country with a population of 1.4 billion (140 crore), more than 80 million (8 crore) people are living with diabetes.
“It’s a huge responsibility of the world leader in diabetes to be able to bring good, effective and innovative treatments as fast as possible to people in India. So either from a responsibility perspective or from a commercial perspective, it is a big, big opportunity,” he said.
Dawber, who is based in the Bengaluru unit of Danish drugmakers, believes that the academic expertise of Indian doctors is “highly rated” and “much dependable”. “So when we are doing innovative research, we want to bring our new medicines to be researched in India and then launched as fast as possible.”
‘Fully committed to India’
The company claims that more than 3.5 million (35lakh) people depend on them for their drugs.
While India contributes just 1 per cent to the revenue of the firm, in terms of the number of patients who depend on the company worldwide, 8 per cent of those patients come from India.
“We have 3,000 employees doing knowledge-based work in India… So, a country which is only contributing 1 per cent to the revenue has got 8-10 per cent of new Nordisk employees working in India,” Shrotriya said.
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