Novo Nordisk Expands Suits Against Weight-Loss Drug Compounders

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk said on Tuesday it has filed 14 new lawsuits in the United States against the sale of unapproved versions of semaglutide, the main ingredient in its popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs, Wegovy and Ozempic.

The new lawsuits target pharmacies and telehealth companies producing compounded versions of semaglutide “under the fake guise of personalization,” Novo said, without naming the companies.

Shares of major telehealth firm Hims & Hers HIMS.N extended losses to fall nearly 13% in afternoon trade. It had earlier reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue.

A Reuters search of legal filings found some cases filed by Novo in California dated Aug. 4 but none regarding San Francisco-based Hims.

Hims was not immediately available for comment.

Compounders copy brand-name medicines that are in short supply by combining, mixing or altering drug ingredients to meet demand.

These companies were briefly allowed to produce hundreds of thousands of compounded doses of Novo’s obesity and diabetes drugs when the Food and Drug Administration said they were in short supply.

When the agency later banned the sale of these copies, Hims and Hers shifted to creating versions of semaglutide in personalized doses not accessible through the branded manufacturers.

Novo’s lawsuits allege that telehealth providers violate state corporate practice of medicine laws by improperly influencing doctors’ decisions and steering patients toward knockoff compounded “semaglutide” under the guise of personalized medicine.

In reality, these are knockoffs that have not been approved as safe and effective and are often made with illicit foreign active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), Novo said.

It did not immediately respond to a Reuters query on which companies were being named in the lawsuit.

(Reporting by Choudhury and Santhosh in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Diana Jones, Jonathan Stempel and Amina Niasse; Editing by Sahal Muhammed and Devika Syamnath)