For those who’ve witnessed the massive surge in interest in the GLP-1 phenomenon this year, it would most certainly not come as a surprise that this new class of drugs is now a titan among the more traditional weight loss methods, at least as far as Google searches are concerned.
Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 (GLP-1) hormone plays an important role in regulating hunger by stimulating the release of insulin in the pancreas, blocking the unhelpful release of glucagon after meals to prevent excess glucose from entering the bloodstream, and slowing the emptying of the stomach to reduce the overall food intake. Simultaneously, GLP-1 receptors also suppress the brain’s stress response and reward/reinforcement mechanism to increase the feeling of satiation.
Looks like $GPCR missed the mark – we anticipated 7-10% weight loss needed to match $LLY (vs. 3% shown) and minimized AEs (GPCR seems to have hit on this with only 1 discontinue in the T2D group and none in obesity group)
Oral GLP proving to be tricky….is there really a window… pic.twitter.com/cFLf9cUbzK
— BowTiedBiotech (@BowTiedBiotech) December 18, 2023
Novo Nordisk sells its Semaglutide GLP-1 injections under the Ozempic and Wegovy labels. Eli Lilly and Company, on the other hand, sells its Tirzepatide GLP-1 cocktail under the Mounjaro and Zepbound labels. Structure Therapeutics has also risen to the limelight recently as its orally administered GLP-1 drug cocktail – a veritable holy grail in the weight loss arena – showed promising results in preliminary trials.
This brings us to the crux of the matter. As per an analysis by GarageGymReviews, Google searches for GLP-1 weight loss drugs such as Ozempic have outgrown searches for traditional weight loss methods, including those involving diet, nutrition, and exercise, by 13.7x since Q1 2022. In fact, the search queries for the more traditional weight loss methods have declined by 26 percent relative to the prevailing level of interest in Q1 2022.
Some experts believe that gym customers will soon be able to access GLP-1 drugs within their respective gym’s fitness program to enhance the overall effectiveness of these offerings. Of course, the fitness industry remains divided on this optionality, with some terming such access a shoddy fix to a multi-dimensional obesity problem.
Morgan Stanley has estimated that around 11 percent of US households – corresponding to roughly 5 percent of the total population – currently have at least one member on a weekly regimen of GLP-1 drugs, with another 17 percent of the households open to the possibility of a family member adopting this pharmaceutical intervention.
Capital Group recently estimated that the Total Addressable Market (TAM) of these GLP-1 drugs is well over 2 billion people. This supports the projection that the annual sales of these drugs will hit the $100 billion level by 2030.
