Novo Nordisk Bets on Oral Access and Combination Research to Revive Growth Story
05.06.2026 - 13:06:11 | boerse-global.de
With its shares trading nearly 46% below the 52-week high and down roughly 15.7% year to date, Novo Nordisk is leaning on two distinct growth levers: expanding the oral version of Wegovy into new markets and testing a combination therapy for older patients. Both moves aim to shore up the Danish drugmaker’s position in the fiercely competitive obesity space.
The Emirates Drug Establishment has cleared oral semaglutide 25 mg — the tablet form of Wegovy — for weight management and cardiovascular protection. That makes the United Arab Emirates the first market outside the United States where the pill is available. The approval rests on data from the OASIS-4 trial, in which adults with obesity or overweight plus at least one comorbidity shed an average of about 17% of their body weight. Safety findings matched the established profile of the injectable GLP-1.
The UAE offers a sizable addressable market. Roughly 28% of adults in the country live with obesity, and projections suggest nearly 7.5 million people could be affected by obesity or overweight by 2035. The pill format carries a clear strategic edge: many patients who shy away from injections can now access the therapy orally. Novo Nordisk plans to roll out the tablet to additional countries in the second half of 2026.
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Meanwhile, the company is also investing in combination strategies. In a clinical supply agreement with US biotech Veru Inc., Novo Nordisk will provide Wegovy free of charge for the Phase 2b study dubbed PLATEAU. Veru will conduct and finance the trial, which tests whether its novel oral androgen receptor modulator, Enobosarm, paired with Wegovy beats Wegovy alone in older adults with obesity. Novo Nordisk gets access to study design, interim results and safety data — knowledge it can apply to its own internal pipeline.
The combination approach targets a patient segment that remains harder to treat: elderly individuals with obesity, for whom existing therapies may offer limited benefit. As the global chronic weight-management market swells, rivals are piling in with their own candidates, and combination therapies that hit different mechanisms could become the next breakthrough. The PLATEAU study is expected to run for several months; initial data are not anticipated before 2027.
For now, investors remain cautious. The stock changed hands at around €37.65 on Thursday, down 3.6% on the week and nearly 46% below the June 2025 peak of €70.13. Sector-wide pressure and intensifying competition have weighed on shares.
But the two-pronged push — oral expansion abroad and combination R&D — signals a strategy that looks beyond merely leaning on price increases in home markets. Novo Nordisk is betting that easier administration and novel regimens can reignite the growth narrative, even if the payoff from the combination study is still years away.
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