SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Eli Lilly said on Tuesday its diabetes drug tirzepatide has received approval from Chinese regulators, increasing competition with its Danish rival Novo Nordisk (NYSE:) in the key Asian market.
Novo Nordisk’s popular diabetes drug Ozempic won approval from China in 2021 and the company saw sales of the weekly shot double in the greater Chinese region, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, to 4.8 billion Danish krone ($698 million) last year.
Eli Lilly (NYSE:) did not say when sales would begin in China or how many doses would be delivered.
Shares of the drugmaker rose 3.2% in early trading.
Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in the diabetes drug Mounjaro and the American company’s weight loss drug Zepbound.
Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are rushing to increase production in a weight-loss market expected to reach at least $100 billion worldwide by the end of the decade. Both companies’ obesity treatments belong to a class of drugs originally developed for diabetes known as GLP-1 agonists.
“It’s another market where the two classic contenders will compete with each other… I welcome that,” Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen, CEO of Novo Nordisk, told reporters at a press conference.
“There are more patients needing care than there are products available. So there is a positive competitive dynamic and we are used to competing in that,” he said.
GLP-1 drugs have been shown to help patients lose as much as 20% of their weight on average, driving unprecedented demand.
Novo Nordisk expected in March that its weight-loss drug Wegovy would be sold in China this year and marketed with a limited supply in the country, which experts say has the highest number of overweight or obese people in the world.
Skyrocketing demand for Zepbound caused Eli Lilly to raise its annual sales forecast by $2 billion last month.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last month that most Mounjaro and Zepbound doses would be in limited supply in the second quarter of this year due to increased demand.
Mounjaro has been approved in the US since 2022 for patients with type 2 diabetes to control their blood sugar levels. It was approved for weight loss in the US late last year under the brand name Zepbound.
($1 = 6.8673 Danish Krone)
