Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the $10 billion acquisition of obesity drug startup Metsera, competing with Novo Nordisk and its plans to expand their weight-loss drug pipeline.
Pfizer Inc. doubles growth Drug race to lose weightwith CEO Albert Bourla stating that the company will be a “formidable competitor” after securing a $10 billion deal to acquire obesity drug developer Metsera.
“Pfizer plays big when it plays, and we will, as we did with COVID, as we did with Lipitor, as we did with [with] Viagra, with all the drugs we have invented and put on the market, we will do the same against obesity,” Bourla said Thursday on “Morning with Maria.”
The deal allows the pharmaceutical giant to secure the rights to new weight-loss treatments still in testing, entering a space already crowded with popular GLP-1 drugs such as Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy.
Pfizer expects to have its first weight-loss treatment on the market by the end of 2028, a move that could position the company to capture a share of what Bourla called a “huge” market estimated at about $150 to $200 billion.
PFIZER WINS $10 Billion Bidding War for Obesity Drug Developer METSERA IN MAJOR PHARMACEUTICAL ACQUISITION
In this undated photo taken at an undisclosed location, a woman injects a GLP-1 injection into her stomach. (iStock / iStock)
The deal with Metsera followed a months-long back-and-forth between Pfizer and Novo Nordisk, both of which made bids for the company.
Bourla said Pfizer has acquired a “very good portfolio” from Metsera and will continue to build on its own strengths to become a “formidable competitor” in the space.
The pharmaceutical giant, which has its own direct-to-consumer platform PfizerForAll, is joining the Trump administration’s push to lower prescription drug prices and is coordinating the White House’s upcoming plans. TrumpRx Platform designed to give Americans more direct access to medications without relying on traditional insurers or middlemen.
On June 28, 2023, several packages of the weight-loss drug Wegovy from the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk lie on the sales counter in a Danish pharmacy in Copenhagen, Denmark. GLP-1 drugs have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years due to their properties. (Steffen Trumpf/photo alliance via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“I think the TrumpRx that he just talked about is a great opportunity for Americans to get medicine at a fraction of the cost,” Bourla said.
‘That’s going to create very positive momentum, and a lot of it patients who missed their prescriptions at the pharmacy because they couldn’t afford them – now they will, so we’ll have more medicine in the hands of patients, and a healthier America.”
Bourla said the company will integrate medicines with the TrumpRx initiative to streamline access to medicines.
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“We’ll be able to have a complete website with all of the 40-plus products that we’re going to include in this TrumpRx,” he said.
“It will be ready in December, so when TrumpRx launches, it will be able to immediately send those who log into that website to our website so we can take care of all the logistics.”
