Substance-for-money exchange: $32 billion semaglutide market enters patent collapse phase

The market for weight loss drugs that revolutionized pharmacoculture in the early 2020s is entering a new phase. This year, Novo Nordisk's patents for semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, perhaps the most famous drug in this class, will expire in five major countries. This means that generic manufacturers will enter the race, new numerous players who are already preparing to make money by flooding the world with inexpensive analogs.

The global pharmaceutical market is based on the patent system. Since the creation of a new effective drug costs billions of dollars, a pharmaceutical company is granted a patent that guarantees for some time the exclusive right to produce and sell the new product. This monopoly allows high prices to be set in order to recoup development costs and make a profit.

When the patent expires, anyone can produce and sell analogs - generics of the original drug. This sharply increases competition and usually results in a significant price reduction.

This two-stage system allows, on the one hand, to finance and incentivize expensive innovative developments and, on the other hand, to provide low-cost medicines to the masses in need after the patent expires.

The moment patents on popular blockbuster drugs expire is called patent cliff and is eagerly awaited by many competitors.

The semaglutide market is a tidbit: Mordor Intelligence estimates it will reach nearly $32 billion globally in 2026, with the prospect of nearly doubling in the next five years.

On January 4, the patent for semaglutide expired in Canada. As Bloomberg reports, as of November 30, 2025, nine applications for registration of semaglutide drugs had already been filed in the country, including from large generic companies such as Switzerland's Sandoz and India's Dr. Reddy's. Freedom Finance Global analyst Aydin Seitzhapbar calls them the most promising.

Canada's Apotex, South Africa's Aspen and Israel's Teva are also among the contenders, according to the CBC broadcaster.

In addition, the American telemedicine platform Hims&Hers, which recommends, among other things, weight loss programs, in anticipation of the first low-cost generic semaglutide, decided to enter the Canadian market through the acquisition of the local company Livewell.

In 2026, patents for semaglutide will also expire in China, India, Brazil and Turkey. These countries are home to 33% of the world's adults diagnosed with obesity.

And these are not just potential patients, but people who until recently had very limited access to new drugs. Both because of the high price (which in 2024 was as high as $1200 for a monthly course of injections) and because of a general shortage. Demand was growing so fast that Novo was barely able to serve the wealthiest markets in the US and EU, shipping semaglutide to all other countries on a residual basis. Its main competitor Eli Lilly was experiencing similar problems.

In Brazil, it came to the point where gangsters were purposely robbing pharmacies to get their hands on scarce weight-loss drugs, The New York Times reported in 2025. In India and China, people flocked to the gray market. With such frenzied demand, it's not at all surprising that powerful Indian and Chinese pharma manufacturers have been preparing for the semaglutide patent debacle since as early as 2023.

According to GlobalData, 16 Chinese pharmaceutical companies are developing generics of semaglutide, including United Laboratories, Huadong Medicine and Qilu Pharmaceutical. Reuters also named Hangzhou Jiuyuan Genetic Biopharm and CSPC Pharmaceutical Group among the contenders back in mid-2024.

By 2030, the number of overweight and obese Chinese could reach 630 million, the South China Morning Post reports, and an intense struggle is unfolding for this market. At the very end of 2025, Novo cut the prices of its drugs in half in some provinces of China, and Eli Lilly by 80%, the newspaper notes. This means that local manufacturers will have to "fall" even lower.

However, the Chinese pharmaceutical market is not only alive with generics - about 60 local companies are developing original formulas of new-generation weight loss drugs, SCMP notes, and international firms are increasingly paying attention to these developments. For example, last year Novo acquired global rights to such a drug from United Laboratories for $200 million with the prospect of total payments of up to $2 billion.

In India, interest in semaglutide is no less, and perhaps even greater. And it's not just domestic demand - the country has long specialized in the global supply of cheap generics around the world and has been a leader in this segment, with about 20% of the generics market, for which it has been nicknamed "the world's pharmacy," Bain analysts wrote.

More than a dozen major Indian companies have already applied for registration of generics of semaglutide, Iqvia said, with seven of them in tablet form. This is a new form (previously there were only injections) recently approved as a weight loss treatment in the US. India's Biocon has already partnered with a company that will market its semaglutide in Brazil. Lupin expects to sell $1 billion worth of its semaglutide in India alone. Among other contenders, Reuters names major Indian pharma companies Cipla and Sun Pharma. And the head of the aforementioned Dr. Reddy's said last year that the company is already targeting markets in 87 countries, starting with those where patents will expire first.

In addition to pharmaceutical companies themselves, the beneficiaries of the patent collapse could be manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients - raw materials for drugs, such as the Swiss Bachem, which is already expanding capacity in anticipation of increased demand, C&EN notes. As well as manufacturers of syringe pens for injectable forms of semaglutide, such as India's Shaily Engineering Plastics, whose shares rose by 38% last year, adds India's The Economic Times.

The generic price war, which could drop the cost of semaglutide in some countries to $15 for a one-month course, will be a "hallelujah!" moment for many patients, Bloomberg quoted Usha Ayyagari, a senior endocrinologist at a clinic in Chennai, India, as saying.

However, drugs of this class are not a panacea. As the study showed, about 65% of patients without type 2 diabetes, that is, suffering only from excess weight, stopped taking the drugs in less than a year, and within two years - 84%.

The main reasons are named high price and side effects - nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. In the case of discontinuation of the reception of the lost weight returns on average in 1.7 years, and along with it "roll back" and other positive effects - again increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, blood sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure, writes Forbes. "Notably, these negative effects are worse than those that occur when non-medication-based behavioral weight loss programs are discontinued," the magazine notes.

According to McKinsey analysts, humanity is now at a crossroads - whether to fight obesity alone or to strive for a more ambitious goal - universal metabolic health. "'Metabolic health' is a buzzword in the wellness field," writes the NYT. And weight-loss medications are just one piece in that puzzle. To maintain metabolic health, you need to monitor other parameters in addition to waist size - at least triglyceride (fat) and blood sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure, the newspaper explains.

To date, the main revenue in metabolic health has been generated by the same GLP-1 drugs as well as continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems, notes Aydın Seitzhapbar.

McKinsey estimates that the path to metabolic health is more complex than simply fighting excess weight, but will yield 3.5 times the benefits in the form of 469 million years of healthy life and $5.65 trillion in economic benefits globally.

Of course, there are already quite a few people looking to capitalize on the fashion trend. At the most influential Consumer Electronics Show, which ended on January 9, systems and gadgets for metabolic health were presented in a separate track.

"Home kits to determine hormone levels using urine and saliva; smart menstrual pads and daily pads; a device to track hydration levels in the toilet; a mirror that analyzes blood flow in the facial area to assess aging; a sperm microscope; and a smart scale that analyzes metabolic health through foot sweat," The Verge correspondent Victoria Song lists the new products. "Essentially, this obsession with body fluids indicates that the entire industry is betting on metabolic health as the next frontier." she summarizes.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor