Trillion Dollar Shot, Episode 1: Birth of a Blockbuster

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.2 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, there was Lotte Bjerre Knudsen. In the 1990s, the young scientist at the Danish drug company Novo Nordisk was trying to unlock the key to a new technology for treating Type 2 diabetes. To her bosses, Lotte’s project, which focused on a hormone called GLP-1, looked like a distraction. But as Lotte fought to save her diabetes project from the chopping block, she couldn’t have imagined how much of an impact her breakthrough would have. Her work would pave the way for a hit drug called Ozempic. And it would unleash a new class of blockbuster drugs, pitting two companies in a race to become the world’s first trillion-dollar pharmaceutical company by market cap. Listen to Part 1 of “Trillion Dollar Shot” now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I admit to a slight bit of syringe anxiety.
0:10.0	I admit to a slight bit of syringe anxiety. I'm not happy to admit that but you know that
0:18.9	is something that I've dealt with so whenever I...
0:21.2	Back in January I hopped on a video call with my colleague Bradley Olson, who's out in San Francisco.
0:27.0	Brad was about to give himself a dose of a drug he'd been taking for weight loss.
0:32.0	It was an unusual and personal moment for a drug he'd been taking for weight loss.
0:32.7	It was an unusual and personal moment for a coworker to share.
0:36.6	Whenever I would get it, like the first couple times
0:38.8	I would like just breathe in, breathe out, you know?
0:42.4	And then it would feel like ridiculous because it's like a very small
0:46.0	pinprick that you barely feel, you know? Brad has struggled with his weight for more
0:50.5	than 20 years and he said this medication made it easier than it had ever been for him to lose weight.
0:57.0	In five months, Brad had lost about 40 pounds.
1:01.0	You know, the thing that was in the beginning like a revelation. I know that
1:06.4	sounds crazy but like without medicine when I would eat well when I would kind of follow a good course I would just feel very hungry and it wouldn't be a good hungry it would just be annoying.
1:24.0	It would just be annoying,
1:26.0	annoying and disruptive and frustrating.
1:31.0	When you're on the medicine, it was just great.
1:35.0	Those voices which I came to really hate were just silent.
1:41.0	This medicine is part of a new class of pharmaceuticals that has exploded in popularity
1:49.8	over the last few years.
1:52.1	The most well known is Ozempik.
	...

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