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Good morning. It’s hard to be the first company in a new disease area or drug class, and perhaps even harder to maintain a lead. We dig into that today.pharma

A cautious culture cost Novo its obesity lead

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk was the first to sell a new generation of GLP-1 obesity drugs, but it’s now widely seen as trailing Eli Lilly. How did it get here? I spoke with former Novo employees to understand.

Three former R&D employees, speaking with me on condition of anonymity, said Novo took an overly cautious approach as Lilly forged ahead aggressively. For example, Novo was developing a weekly triple agonist candidate as early as the late 2010s, but i

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