According to Futu Securities News APP, the American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.US) is now selling the bottled version of its best-selling weight loss drug Zepbound, known as the "miracle weight loss drug," to patients for as low as $399 per month, as the company strives to overcome the shortage of popular weight loss drug injections.

In a recent statement, Lilly stated that patients with a prescription for the weight loss drug Zepbound can now purchase a one-month supply of disposable small bottles directly from Lilly's consumer-facing website LillyDirect starting from Tuesday. The highest price for these small bottles is about half of the normal dose injection of the Zepbound weight loss drug, with higher doses priced at $549 per month and lower at $399, making it more affordable compared to the normal dose.

It is understood that Lilly's Zepbound is usually sold in the form of an exclusive automatic injection pen dosage. When using the small bottles, patients need to fill the syringe by themselves, but this saves Lilly's production time for weight loss drugs, making it more widely available to a larger group of patients.

Patrick Johnson, Executive Vice President of Lilly, stated in an interview that this move is part of Lilly's "all-out" effort to increase the availability of Zepbound and a large-scale medication called Mounjaro, which is both a diabetes treatment and weight loss drug, and both of these drugs are currently in short supply. It is reported that the company also offers a cheaper injection option for uninsured patients, which could cost up to $1000 per month.

Both Eli Lilly and Co and their strongest competitors in the weight loss drug field, novo-nordisk a/s (NVO.US), are striving to meet the almost unlimited demand for obesity-fighting drugs of the people - Goldman Sachs, a major Wall Street bank, predicts that by the end of this decade (2030), the market size of weight loss drugs will reach a staggering $130 billion. Since their launch, novo-nordisk's Wegovy and Eli Lilly's Zepbound have been in short supply, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still considers them to be very scarce.

Before the opening of the US stock market, Lilly's stock price fell by 3.2% in pre-market trading, but with the stimulus of the bottled weight loss drug entering the market, the stock price quickly recovered most of its losses. As of Monday's close, Lilly's stock price has risen by as much as 63% year-to-date, far exceeding the 30% increase of its competitor novo-nordisk so far this year.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley stated in a recent report that while cost reductions may temporarily lower the average sales price of Eli Lilly's Zepbound, the additional sales volume of bottled medication 'may have a positive impact on Lilly's sales performance'.

Due to ongoing shortages of anti-obesity drugs from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed certain pharmaceutical manufacturers to produce generic drugs. Although these drugs are marketed as having the same active ingredients as Zepbound or Wegovy, they do not have the same level of regulation or official guarantee from the pharmaceutical companies, and in some cases, they may even lead to hospitalization for patients.

Because they are usually much cheaper than brand-name weight-loss medications, they are driving the development of a generic drug market estimated to be worth as much as $1 billion, which directly competes with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

For Eli Lilly, the complexity of manufacturing their exclusive auto-injector pens severely hampers the supply. Earlier this year, U.S. patients who were struggling to meet prescription demands began urging Eli Lilly to sell the medication in a more easily producible vial form, as has already been done in other countries.

'They have the pull strings to alleviate the shortage,' Dave Knapp told the media in April, referring to a social media campaign he initiated to pressure Eli Lilly to ' #ReleaseTheVials'.

During the Q&A session of the company's earnings call in early August, they announced that a single-dose vial version of Zepbound will be launched soon. 'We are definitely listening to feedback,' emphasized Jones, who is also the President of Eli Lilly's Cardio-Metabolic and U.S. Lilly Diabetes market.

Currently, these vials can only be accessed through Eli Lilly's direct-to-consumer online platform, LillyDirect, for patients who self-pay for weight-loss medication.

Jones emphasized that unlike with compounding pharmacies, patients and healthcare professionals will know that they are taking the appropriate dosage of genuine Eli Lilly weight-loss medication. The company will also provide detailed instructions, including how to properly administer the vial version of the weight-loss drug.

In addition to relieving the supply pressure of eli lilly and co's "weight loss miracle drug" Zepbound at normal injection doses, these small vial versions are also expected to help expand the range of medication for millions of Medicare patients, who are neither covered by insurance for Zepbound nor eligible for coupons. Eli Lilly and Co also offers discounts on the small vial versions to patients who are not covered by commercial insurance plans for the drug, but this does not include Medicare patients.

Frank Cunningham, Vice President of Global Value and Access at eli lilly and co, said that LillyDirect was successfully launched last year and now provides online services to "thousands" of patients each week. In addition, other top American pharmaceutical companies, including pfizer, have recently launched similar online medical services.

Research has found that eli lilly and co's "weight loss miracle drug" is more effective than novo-nordisk a/s.

Before eli lilly and co announced the latest research progress of Zepbound for cardiovascular treatment, a recent study found that obese patients using eli lilly and co's weight loss and diabetes treatment drug Mounjaro (with Tirzepatide as the main ingredient) had significantly greater weight loss than patients using novo-nordisk a/s's weight loss and diabetes treatment drug Ozempic (with Semaglutide as the main ingredient).

The above research is of great significance for the two pharmaceutical giants, 'Eli Lilly and Co' and 'Novo-nordisk a/s', which are forming a monopoly in the weight loss drug market. It may prompt more obese patients or people trying to lose weight through injections to turn to 'Eli Lilly and Co' instead of 'Novo-nordisk a/s', which may also have a boosting effect on 'Eli Lilly and Co's stock price.

The major research analyzed electronic health records of approximately 0.041 million obese or severely overweight patients and found that patients taking 'Mounjaro' weight loss drug from 'Eli Lilly and Co' had an average weight loss of 5.9% after three months of injection, while the patient group using 'Ozempic' from 'Novo-nordisk a/s' had an average weight loss of 3.6% after injection.

Looking at a longer time frame, after using six months, the average weight loss of Mounjaro users reached as high as 10.1%, while the average weight loss of Ozempic users was only 5.8%. After 12 months, the average weight loss of Mounjaro users was 15.3%, while the average weight loss of Ozempic users was 8.3%. The study also showed that the risk of gastrointestinal adverse events for the two types of weight loss injection drugs was generally similar.

The detailed content of this groundbreaking study is published on the official website of the top international medical journal "JAMA Internal Medicine".

According to research data from Bloomberg Intelligence, the market size of weight loss drugs such as 'Eli Lilly and Co' is expected to reach at least $80 billion by 2030. However, the expectation of Wall Street giant 'Goldman Sachs' is even more optimistic. A forecast report from 'Goldman Sachs' shows that by 2030, the annual sales of the global anti-obesity drug market may increase to around $130 billion, while the annual sales in early 2023 were only $6 billion. The World Obesity Federation (WOF) predicts that by 2035, more than 4 billion people (more than half of the world's population) may suffer from obesity to varying degrees.