Novo Nordisk to phase out key drug, insulin cos spot big biz opportunity
Novo Nordisk
prepares to phase out some forms of its
human premix insulin
brand Mixtard-a move seen overlapping with its planned launch of
weight-loss drug Wegovy
in India-other top insulin makers are rushing to ramp up production capacity to bridge the potential demand-supply gap the move is expected to create, said top company executives.
The Danish pharma major, the maker of semaglutide blockbusters Ozempic and Wegovy, is planning to retire a range of insulin formulations available in easy-to-use disposable pen and cartridge forms by the end of this year. This would include human insulin in penfill and flexpen, including Mixtard 30 Penfill and Flexpen, Actrapid Penfill and Flexpen, Insulatard Penfill and Flexpen, and Mixtard 50 Penfill over the next six months. It will also phase out insulin brand Levemir in FlexPen and Xultophy FlexTouch (Insulin + GLP1).
The company recently informed
Abbott India
about this planned phase-out, according to a document accessed by ET. Abbott is the marketing partner for Novo's insulin.
Confirming the development, a Novo Nordisk spokesperson said, "In order to meet increasing patient demand and ensure a stable supply of our medicines, we have decided to consolidate our insulin portfolio, as this will create space needed in our global manufacturing network. Hence, in this process, we are phasing out the penfill."
However, the company said it is not discontinuing Mixtard in India and "it will continue to be available in vials". The company did not provide any details on specific brands.
"Along with it, other forms of insulins, including human insulins from Novo Nordisk, will continue to be available in vials and devices for patients across India," the spokesperson said. "With the decision, we strive not to leave any patients without alternative treatment options, either from Novo Nordisk or other companies. It is important to us that the transition to other devices or treatment options is as smooth as possible for patients."
The phasing out of the penfill Mixtard creates an opportunity for other human premix insulin makers such as
Lupin
, Eris, Eli Lilly,
Wockhardt
and
Cadila
, said industry insiders.
Amit Bakshi, MD,
Eris Lifesciences
, which is ramping up capacity to produce penfill insulin said, "Our strategy is to make sure how we are available through and through and how we can ramp up manufacturing."
However, according to him the transition phase may be a "small level of emergency", as a lot of hoarding has been happening in the last couple of months after the news has been out, with several large stockists and patients increasing their stock.
"We may not be able to take on all of the demand immediately but are planning to take 60-70% of it."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
First Post
41 minutes ago
- First Post
Boeing's Woes Escalate: 3,200 Defence Workers Strike Over Pay Deal Firstpost America
Boeing's Woes Escalate: 3,200 Defence Workers Strike Over Pay Deal | Firstpost America | N18G Boeing is facing its first defence division strike in nearly 30 years as over 3,200 union workers walk out from plants in Missouri and Illinois. The strike follows the rejection of a proposed four-year contract offering a 40% wage rise, bonuses, and benefits. Workers at these manufacturing facilities assemble key defence equipment, including the F-15 fighter jets, F/A-18 Super Hornets, T-7 trainer jets, and MQ-25 drone. Boeing said it had activated contingency plans to continue operations. The strike hits as Boeing grapples with commercial delays, safety issues, and the aftermath of a fatal Air India crash. No resolution of the strike is currently in sight, and the Pentagon has yet to comment on the walkout. Watch to know more. See More
Hindustan Times
3 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
The American Fighting to Pry His Company Back From the Kremlin's Grasp
American businessman Leonid Smirnov first got the feeling that something was off when local Russian newspapers began airing rumors that the government was looking at taking over his company, the biggest producer of canned goods in the country. It was only when he received a phone call from an employee at 3:30 a.m. at his Los Angeles residence last October that he found out for sure that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the nationalization of Glavprodukt. His was the first U.S.-owned company to fall victim to what is now a mounting wave of Kremlin business seizures. For nearly a year, Smirnov says, he has been embroiled in an absurd legalistic circus. His experience provides a glimpse into the nationalizations and appropriations of both domestic and foreign business after Putin unleashed the full-blown invasion of Ukraine three years ago in what has been the biggest redistribution of Russian wealth since the breakup of the Soviet Union. In many cases, the Kremlin transferred control to state-run enterprises or businessmen loyal to Putin, deepening his support base, analysts say. Companies from German utility Uniper to Danish brewer Carlsberg have been targeted. French food manufacturer Danone's Russian assets were placed under temporary state management in 2023 and later sold to a Kremlin ally at a significant discount. Russia's government has often justified the seizures on national-security and legal grounds or as a response to new sanctions from the West. The nearly 300 U.S. companies still operating in Russia remained untouched—until now. The Düsseldorf-based energy company Uniper saw its Russia assets seized two years ago. Since his early-morning call, Smirnov has fought moves against him in court. He has also tried to push the fate of the company onto the negotiating table between Russian and U.S. officials seeking to make good on President Trump's efforts to seek some thaw in relations. But so far to no avail: A Russian court approved the nationalization last month. Smirnov's legal appeal has yet to be decided. 'It's not just about doing what I can to save my company which was illegally and heinously expropriated, but making sure there isn't a second or a third U.S. company,' said Smirnov. Russia's manic post-Soviet privatizations once drove Western businessmen into the country with the promise of fantastic returns. Local companies also ran up against organized crime and a spate of gangland killings, which later subsided when Putin rose to power in 2000. Now many of the foreign investors who survived are seeing their businesses expropriated as ties with the West worsen. The total value of property confiscated from foreign and local investors has reached 3.9 trillion rubles, or about $49 billion, according to the Moscow-based law firm Nektorov, Saveliev & Partners, with the pace of nationalizations accelerating this year. Many of these assets have then been transferred to business owners big and small, all united in their loyalty to Putin's regime. Smirnov was born in the Soviet Union before moving to the U.S. in 1980. He founded Glavprodukt in 1999, lured by a vast Russian market opening up to Western consumerism. Smirnov focused on tinned meats, fish and ready-to-eat meals, and as the company grew, its offerings became a staple in the stores to which the country's working classes flocked. With its loyal customer base, his company survived the ups and downs of Putin's rule. But in the weeks that followed the nationalization decree, Smirnov watched from the U.S. as new management came into the offices, changing locks and passwords and even hiring a new private security firm to keep watch over the company's headquarters and factories. Loyal employees were fired and a new cadre of managers were brought in. To justify the nationalization, the new management promised to repurpose the company to feed the Russian army and boost exports to China and North Korea. A general manager was appointed at the behest of a large food producer called Druzhba Narodov, or Friendship of Peoples. That raised Smirnov's suspicion that behind the raid is that company's ultimate owner, Alexander Tkachev, a former minister of agriculture and governor of Russia's southern Krasnodar region. Druzhba Narodov didn't respond to a request for comment. Tkachev has been sanctioned by both the U.S. and the European Union. As Russian soldiers have occupied swaths of southern Ukraine, he has also been behind some of the biggest Russian appropriations of Ukrainian farmland. As the new manager, Alexander Dolgov, and other management leaders settled into their roles, Dolgov told the prosecutor in a court case against Smirnov that the nationalization of the company would ensure continued deliveries of food to Russia's Defense Ministry as well as the country's equivalent to the National Guard. In reality, the new management has cut and consolidated production lines, discontinued popular brands and caused sales to fall by half, Smirnov said. Smirnov's U.S.-based companies Universal Beverage and Universal Beverage 2000 were the owners of Glavprodukt. 'They want to use government cover to confiscate a $200 million business from an American company,' said Smirnov. Smirnov, an American citizen who has a signed copy of 'The Art of the Deal' he got from Trump at a reception 30 years ago, has hope that the U.S. president can force Putin's hand to return ownership of the company. In interviews with Breitbart, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said previously that Glavprodukt was going to be a topic of discussion at talks, and Trump said in March he thought Putin would be 'generous' on the issue of the company. So far, the Kremlin hasn't offered to resolve the matter. Russia's presidential administration didn't respond to a request for comment. Since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, nearly 500 U.S. firms have completely exited Russia or curtailed operations there, cutting ties with a market of 140 million people, according to a tally by the Kyiv School of Economics. Smirnov's story offers a cautionary tale for the U.S. companies that remained, citing contractual obligations, ongoing projects or a need to protect local employees. 'We are far from the end of the process of redistribution of property, of establishing rules of business in today's Russia,' said Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and a former Russian central-bank official. 'This preserves the system and makes business hostage to Putinism, and the new class of owners is well aware of whom it owes its wealth to.' It may also offer a warning for U.S. companies tempted by Putin as he holds out the prospect of better relations with Trump and urges them to return. Write to Thomas Grove at and Georgi Kantchev at
Hindustan Times
4 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Who Is Stephen Miran, Donald Trump's Fed Nominee?
President Trump likes to stir things up, and he's done it again with his choice of Stephen Miran to fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. We can't recall when a President nominated to the Fed someone whose abiding policy conviction is to weaken the U.S. dollar. Mr. Miran has been chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in Mr. Trump's second term. He's an ardent promoter of the President's economic policies, especially tariffs. For Mr. Miran, this is a matter of conviction. Before his White House days he offered a detailed case for rewriting the rules of the global trade and financial system. He summed up his central argument in a widely cited November 2024 essay: 'From a trade perspective, the dollar is persistently overvalued, in large part because dollar assets function as the world's reserve currency.' Foreign central banks hold huge dollar reserves and most of the world's goods are traded in dollars. He says this global demand for dollars results in an overvalued greenback that leads to trade imbalances and harms Americans. His solution? Manage a decline in the dollar's value over time by reducing the global demand for the U.S. currency, or at least mitigate the effects of its overvaluation. Tariffs do the latter in his view by forcing foreigners to pay for the fact that their currencies are undervalued and boost their exports to the U.S. But his ambition goes beyond tariffs. In that 2024 essay he laid out other policy options for negotiating a weaker dollar and diminishing its reserve-currency status. One idea is to tax foreigners who hold U.S. Treasury debt as an incentive to hold less of it. This would amount to a de facto default on current debt. More ambitiously, Mr. Miran floats a 'Mar-a-Lago Accord' in which leading nations would negotiate a new global financial system to rebalance currency values. This echoes the Plaza and Louvre accords of the 1980s that coordinated monetary policies to arrest the surging dollar amid the rush of capital and goods into the U.S. during the Reagan economic boom. Mr. Miran says his essay wasn't 'policy advocacy,' but when you land something like this after an election it's intended to get the attention of policy makers. It did, and Mr. Miran got the White House job. One question is whether Mr. Miran has talked to Mr. Trump about all this. The President likes a weak dollar for protectionist purposes, but he also likes the dollar's reserve-currency status. That status lets the U.S. borrow more cheaply to fund its deficits and gives him leverage to impose sanctions to pursue U.S. security interests. China and Russia in particular want to break the dollar's hold on global trade so U.S. sanctions won't matter. Mr. Trump has gone out of his way to impose higher tariffs on countries that are trying to diminish the dollar's global status—see Brazil. Others have written on these pages about the burden of being a reserve-currency country, notably Lewis Lehrman and John Mueller. But their answer is a global monetary reform that links the dollar to gold. Their goal is a stable dollar, not a weak one. This is a debate worth having, as improbable as such a reform is. But Mr. Miran gives no indication he has given any thought to such a global monetary reform. His preoccupation is devaluing the dollar to reduce the flow of capital and imported goods to the U.S. None of this is at stake any time soon, since Mr. Miran would for now only fill the remaining term of Adriana Kugler, who resigned Friday and whose term ends in January. Mr. Miran would be only a single vote on the Federal Open Market Committee. But Mr. Trump is also looking to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and as Chair Mr. Miran would have a global platform and influence. Senators can do the country a favor by exploring Mr. Miran's views and whether a dollar devaluationist at the Fed is in the U.S. national interest.
