Newsroom Ready: Canadian scientist wins Breakthrough Prize for discovery of hormone used in Ozempic, Mounjaro
Dr. Daniel Drucker of the University of Toronto is sharing a US$3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences prize with four international colleagues for discovering and developing the GLP-1 hormone used in now-famous diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. They received the award at a ceremony in Los Angeles on April 5, 2025. (April 7, 2025)
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Hims & Hers Stock Is Soaring Again. But Should You Buy the Stock?
Hims & Hers stock is on the upswing after the company secured a weight-loss drug partnership. Hims & Hers is acquiring its way into Europe and wants to build more personalized drugs for its telehealth customers. Shares have soared, but still have a ton of potential for patient long-term shareholders. 10 stocks we like better than Hims & Hers Health › Many companies have failed to disrupt the complicated U.S. healthcare market. Hims & Hers (NYSE: HIMS) may finally be succeeding in cracking the code. The online telehealth platform focuses on circumventing the insurance market; its business of selling affordable medications directly to individuals is growing like a weed, and expects to generate $6.5 billion in revenue by 2030. It has had a tumultuous start to 2025, as Hims & Hers waged a battle to sell new weight loss medications on its online marketplace. Now, with momentum back on its side, the stock is up 118% year to date and 446% in the last five years. Let's take a deeper look at this company, and see whether you might want to buy Hims & Hers stock for your portfolio now. Hims & Hers' model is simple. It has two separate web platforms -- Hims for men and Hers for women -- that sell medications and deliver to customers' front doors. It began with sexual health, but has moved into dermatology, hair loss, mental health, and now weight loss medications. A key to its success has been avoiding the insurance market with products that don't break the bank. Customers loathe dealing with health insurers in the United States, and sometimes would rather not use insurance at all. Plus, some of these products aren't covered by insurance. This strategy has helped the company close in on over $2 billion in projected revenue in 2025. To keep up this impressive growth, Hims & Hers wants to offer weight loss medications, which have been a blockbuster set of drugs for the pharmaceutical market. For a while the popularity of these drugs, such as Novo Nordisk's Wegovy, left them in short supply; that allowed third parties such as Hims & Hers to produce them as a compounding pharmacy and sell them at much cheaper prices. This ended up generating $200 million of Hims & Hers' $1.4 billion in 2024 revenue. But with the shortage of Wegovy over and the compounding pharmacy exception ended, the company's weight-loss business was at a major turning point. Luckily, at the end of April Hims & Hers announced a partnership with Novo Nordisk that seems to resolve this issue: It gives Hims & Hers the ability to sell Wegovy directly on its platform. Hims & Hers is not an exclusive supplier of the drug -- or any drugs on its marketplaces, to be fair -- but it hopes to use its subscription business model, marketing expertise, and simplified user proposition to drive sales for Novo Nordisk in the huge obesity-care market. Besides weight loss drugs, Hims & Hers has more ambitions to reach its goal of $6.5 billion in revenue by 2030. Just recently, the company announced its intent to acquire European competitor Zava so it could expand its telehealth service to Europe. The acquisition will add a platform with 1.3 million active customers in the U.K., Germany, France, and Ireland. It makes sense that Hims & Hers can supercharge growth for the platform with its plethora of medications offered to customers, keen marketing skills, and subscription-based selling model. Over the long run, Hims & Hers aims to make healthcare for its customers more personalized. This includes unique drug combinations, its own outsourcing facility, and at-home testing capabilities. Details remain sparse, but the vision is clear: disrupting more and more of the trillions of dollars spent on healthcare by building a business that people actually enjoy interacting with. This is why 2.4 million active customers use Hims & Hers today. A revenue goal of $6.5 billion seems well within reach by 2030. Hims & Hers is only at 2.4 million active customers, and there are tens of millions of people in the United States alone who could start using or switch to one of its telehealth platforms. Add on the Zava acquisition in Europe, and the runway for growth gets even larger. The company has an impressive gross profit margin of 77%, which should lead to high levels of profitability at scale. On $6.5 billion in future revenue, it could very well post a net profit margin of over 20%, and achieve $1.5 billion in bottom-line profits and free cash flow. A 20% profit margin is easily achievable because of its high gross margins and the fact it currently spends 40% of revenue on marketing today, a figure that has come down over time and should come down even more as Hims & Hers keeps scaling. However, Hims & Hers has played fast and loose with laws and regulations in the past. It sold weight loss drugs when the legality of doing so was unclear, and although that dispute seems to have been resolved, management could easily start playing with fire again and burn its reputation as a trusted provider of medications. Otherwise, this looks like a fantastic growth stock that just doubled its addressable market with the Zava acquisition. Today, Hims & Hers has a market cap of $12.3 billion. You might think it's overvalued because of the stock's recent run-up in price, but the numbers show that patient investors could be rewarded by holding for the long term. A $12.3 billion market cap is only around 8 times my 2030 earnings estimate of $1.5 billion, which would be a dirt cheap price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio for a fast-growing company compared to the current market cap. Most likely, the stock will be valued at a higher multiple than 8, meaning that the stock will be higher in five years. It doesn't come without risks, but if you're a growth investor, you might love Hims & Hers stock for its long-term potential. Before you buy stock in Hims & Hers Health, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Hims & Hers Health wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $868,615!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 173% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 Brett Schafer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Hims & Hers Health. The Motley Fool recommends Novo Nordisk. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Hims & Hers Stock Is Soaring Again. But Should You Buy the Stock? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Post
6 hours ago
- New York Post
Average penis size has increased — and Ozempic could be to blame, experts say
Ozempic might shrink waistlines, but it seems to bulge another body part. In a recent Reddit thread, male Ozempic users claimed that the weight-loss drugs helped their penises grow. 'I recently measured myself down there and noticed I gained about one inch,' a person proudly shared on the forum. Advertisement Although there hasn't been enough research done on the correlation between semaglutide and men's genitalia measurements — the average penis size is continuing to rise, and some experts think Ozempic might actually have something to do with it. The average penis has grown nearly 10% from 5.17 inches to 5.63 between 2022 and 2024 in the UK, according to And they're not the only ones seeing this increase. Advertisement The data also revealed that Venezuelan men experienced a massive increase from 1.42 inches to 6.67 inches, within those two years. Dr. Richard Viney, a consultant urological surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, thinks Ozempic and similar drugs could be to blame. 'Men's penises shorten as they get older (due to) increasing body fat and increasing prostate size drawing the penis back into the body,' he told Dr. Richard Viney thinks weight-loss drugs, like Ozempic could be to blame for increased penis size. Christopher Sadowski Advertisement 'It is theoretically possible that new drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, which are used to treat diabetes and obesity, respectively and can cause people to lose weight, could also be a factor. As men lose weight, their penises appear larger.' However, in 2023, research published in the World Journal of Men's Health revealed that the average size of what a guy is packing has grown 24% over nearly 30 years. And that sort of increase has health experts concerned — especially because even two years ago, they couldn't put their finger on what the cause of it is. Advertisement Speculation around weight loss drugs being the culprit is possible — but the Ozempic trend is recent, and this growth for men has clearly been going on for some time now. 'Any overall change in development is concerning, because our reproductive system is one of the most important pieces of human biology,' Dr. Michael Eisenberg, the study's author, told Stanford Medicine's blog Scope. 'If we're seeing this fast of a change, it means that something powerful is happening to our bodies.' Other possible causes could be chemical exposure from pesticides or hygiene products, Eisenberg hypothesized, which can disrupt the hormone-regulating endocrine system. Time will only tell if Ozempic or other lifestyle factors are to blame for well-endowed men.
The Hill
14 hours ago
- The Hill
Beyond MAHA: Defeating obesity requires a new strategy
Obesity is a major health problem facing our country. According to the CDC, more than 40 percent of the U.S. population is obese, defined as having a body-mass index above 30. As astounding at that number is, it is perhaps even more surprising that nearly 20 percent of children in the U.S. are obese. Obesity leads to significant health challenges, including diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease and liver disease. It is clear that as a nation we must face this crisis on multiple fronts. Diet and exercise certainly help, and it's critical to ensure that people of all socioeconomic backgrounds have access to healthy foods (free of preservatives, unnecessary dyes, high fructose corn syrups etc.) and are educated in making healthy lifestyle choices. The MAHA or 'Make America Healthy Again' movement has highlighted this as one of its key objectives, and if it is successful, we should see an impact on obesity — especially in children, where diet and exercise have a huge impact on weight-related health outcomes. Obesity in adults, however, is often more challenging. Many adults with obesity struggle to lose weight, despite considerable efforts to modify their lifestyle through diet and exercise. This is because our metabolism changes as we age, and many adults who are overweight develop metabolic dysfunction or 'metabolic syndrome,' which then further perpetuates weight gain and exacerbates the situation. It has become clear in recent years that many people struggling with obesity require medical intervention – not just lifestyle intervention – and that prescriptions can substantially improve weight loss. The explosion in use of GLP-1 agonists, such as Wegovy and Zepbound, over the last two years has underscored the need for medical intervention in obese and overweight patients. Currently, about 6 percent of the U.S. population, or 15 million people, are on GLP-1 weight loss treatments, and the numbers are only expected to increase. However, while most patients lose 10 percent to 25 percent of their body weight while on a GLP-1, they do not maintain GLP-1 treatment in the long-term, with approximately 80 percent of patients discontinuing treatment within 1 year. Gastrointestinal side effects, injectable administration, and high cost have prevented long-term use of GLP-1's for weight maintenance. And unfortunately, most patients gain back all the weight after stopping the medication. Healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry now recognize that obesity — like most other medical conditions — requires an 'arsenal' of treatments, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Post-GLP-1 weight maintenance is now widely recognized as an emerging unmet need. And patients who are not candidates for or cannot tolerate GLP-1s require alternatives. Diet and lifestyle modifications are important alongside prescription medications in fighting obesity. If we are going to be successful in overcoming this major health crisis, we need to ensure that both the pharmaceutical industry and groups like MAHA work hand in hand. Both treatment and prevention are critical in order to regain control of our nation's health. Dr. Shoshana Shendelman, Ph.D. is a scientist and entrepreneur who has founded numerous biotech companies. She is a pioneer in the development of drugs and therapeutics for rare and underserved diseases. Currently she is Vice Chair of the Advisory Board of Columbia University Medical Center and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
