Danish company's India team key to Ozempic's success

BENGALURU: The secret sauce behind Novo Nordisk's blockbuster weight-loss drug, Ozempic, is the Danish pharma giant's India team, which played a key role in the rise of the semaglutide-based drug meant for treating diabetes.

The success of Ozempic and Wegovy - another semaglutide-based drug for weight management - has not only boosted Denmark's economy but also led to Novo Nordisk's market cap surpassing Tesla's.

John Dawber, corporate VP and MD of global business services at Novo Nordisk, said, "Medicalised obesity has exploded over the last couple of years, and everybody's interested in it. But Novo Nordisk's research journey started about two decades ago." The company's research into new treatments for diabetes led to the discovery of benefits of weight management, prompting a separate research programme. Dawber said the demand for these products has surprised the company.

The teams in Novo Nordisk Global Business Services (GBS) based in Bengaluru have collaborated with the global teams to contribute towards the Ozempic programme. Dawber said the Bengaluru team collaborates closely with the headquarters on the semaglutide drug, working on clinical trials, biostatistics, data management, pharmacovigilance, and global safety. It employs 4,000 employees.

Prasanna Kumar T S, VP of global safety in Novo Nordisk GBS, said the role of the biostatistics unit in Bengaluru, which conducts all statistical analysis and reporting for Ozempic. "Our trial statisticians and clinical data scientists engage with the trial squad right from protocol development until the submission of a trial/product to regulatory authorities." Biostatistics applies statistical methods to health data.

Biostatistics, Dawber said, is a highly technical area and something that traditionally the pharma companies keep very close to the headquarters. "We have a team of 150 biostatistics experts in Bengaluru. The VP who heads that function also heads the biostatistics team in Denmark and in the US. Something very highly technical like biostats, we have the global leadership sitting here, and they manage teams here and in other geographies," he said.

Kumar said the global medical affairs team played a pivotal role in the development of Semaglutide. The global medical affairs team has also been instrumental in generating evidence and understanding semaglutide through investigator-initiated studies.

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