NOVO NORDISK TAKES ON THE WEIGH OF THE WORLD

Diabetes drug Ozempic and obesity jab Wegovy have revolutionized the weight-loss industryand dramatically altered the mission of their developer, Novo Nordisk. Now the 100-year-old Danish pharmaceutical firm wants to go beyond treating obesity; it's aiming to rid the world of it altogether.

- Vivienne Walt

THE BLUE SYRINGE PENS zipping along the factory assembly line pass by in a blur; it's only when the machine briefly slows that their labels come into focus: Ozempic. Almost identical white pens, labeled Wegovy, move down a nearby production line. Both look unremarkable. But to the factory owners-Denmark's $351 billion drugmaker Novo Nordisk-the Type 2 diabetes and obesity drugs might as well be made from spun gold.

Tucked amid farmland 26 miles north of Copenhagen, in Hillerød, a town better known for its 400-year-old castle, Novo Nordisk's pharmaceutical factory is a world apart from the celeb-fueled weight-loss craze its output has spawned in the U.S.Hollywood, in particular. At the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in March, host Jimmy Kimmel gazed out at the audience of glittering movie stars and evoked howls of laughter by saying, "Everybody looks so great. When I look around the room, I can't help but wonder, 'Is Ozempic right for me?""

For millions of people, the answer to that question has apparently been a resounding yes. No one at the Oscars even needed to ask what Ozempic is; it's the one-word shorthand for what many see as Big Pharma's fiercest contest in years diet drugs-as readily understandable as Kleenex is for facial tissue.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Ozempic in 2017 as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes. Four years later, the agency gave the green light to Novo's similar drug Wegovy to treat obesity, the first weight-loss drug to win FDA approval in eight years. Wegovy sparked a frenzy among dieters, ramped up by social media influencers and figures like Elon Musk who touted their new pharma-cut bodies to millions of followers. Shortages of Wegovy followed, leading doctors to prescribe Ozempic as an off-label alternative. Off-label use triggered a separate shortage of Ozempic among Type 2 diabetics, who need the drug for its true FDA-approved purpose.