What is the Real-World Impact of the Rise of GLP-1 Medications?

Pharmaceutical Executive: What is the real-world impact of the rise of GLP-1 medications?
Gen Li: Obesity is very difficult issue we have been fighting for decades. As patient, community, and country, we welcome the coming of these new drugs we can use to effectively manage this disease.

Interestingly enough, we were collaborating with the US Congress a few years ago to look at this issue. In that analysis, we found that 50% of human diseases in some way associated with obesity.

The GLP-1 came to us first as a diabetes drug. Obviously, we found out that it’s quite effective at managing weight for human beings. This helps tackle a big issue, it’s an important disease we needed to manage. There are so many other diseases associated with obesity, so it’s not surprising that we can see many other diseases impacted. It’s going to keep growing, but it’s also going to be increasingly difficult to better understand these diseases and how they associate with obesity. We will continue to observe and support developing programs.

PE: What are the synergistic impacts of GLP-1 usage?
Li: We’ll use osteo-arthritis as an example. At Phesi, we begin by putting together a digital patient profile of the disease. You can see that almost 80% of those patients are overweight or obese. You find out that the comorbidities includes obesity. As you can imagine, the reduction of the weight would have a positive impact to the disease.

We’re always trying to understand the patients so we can reliably build a digital version of those patients. That way, we can look at those issues like comorbidities and the severity the disease. All of those can be looked at to help us find the best way to help these patients. With arthritis of the knee, we can see that weight is a very important factor that intensifies that disease. If we can better control the weight of the patient, that would have a positive contribution to the pain of the knee from osteoarthritis.

Most of the other diseases associated with obesity can be approached a similar way, but constructing a digital patient profile.

PE: How does the industry view GLP-1s in terms of treatment potential?
Li: It’s a holistic way of managing many of the diseases because of obesity being a common factor. Almost 50% of human diseases are associated with obesity. You would imagine that better control of weight would have a positive impact on at least a significant portion of those diseases.

How can we define that relationship between obesity and those diseases? That’s something we have to look at disease-by-disease. We must quantify the relationships and that will enable us to be in a better position to define and manage the diseases. For example, we know a lot about the relationship between arthritis of the knee and obesity. The combination of a drug to combat that arthritis and a reduction of weight may have a synergistic impact. It’s just one example.

We must look at specific diseases to establish similar relationships and see how can improve and manage those diseases.