Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Welcome to Investing Insights. I'm your host, Ivana Hampton. Many blockbuster drugs are heading toward a so-called patent cliff.

The pricey prescriptions would face competition from cheaper generics.

Meanwhile, names like Ozympic and Moundjaro are getting a lot of attention. A recent biofarmaceutical

industry landscape from Morningstar researchers points to innovative drugs like those to counter-expiring

patents.

So what does that look like?

And what's the next advancement to get investors excited?

Karen Anderson is a biotechnology strategist for Morningstar Research Services.

Here's our conversation.

Welcome to the podcast, Karen.

Yeah, Karen.

Yeah, great. Thanks.

Great to be here.

Well, demand is skyrocketing for Ozympic, Mount Jaro, and other GLP1 drugs.

What makes them stand out and why are they poised as the next big thing?

Yeah, so the GLP1 drugs, actually, they've been around a while. So 2005, I believe, was when the first drug was approved for diabetes. And this was a drug from Lilly and another smaller biotech company named Amlin. In the beginning, you know, people were noticing that there was a little bit of weight loss, but it wasn't very significant. They were mostly diabetes drugs.

Doctors got more comfortable with them and their safety profile over the years.

And then we kind of had a next generation of products that seemed to show more weight loss.

You start to get to Wagovi and Zepbound 15, 20% weight loss. That first generation was maybe only

5% weight loss. So we kind of crossed a threshold at some point where it went from, you know,

a nice level of weight loss to have for someone with diabetes to something that's really having

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