An Arizona-based compounding pharmacy that worked with telehealth giant Hims & Hers Health is preparing to bring back its controversial weight-loss medication after removing it from the market due to federal regulatory concerns, according to a Tuesday report from Endpoints News.
Strive Pharmacy officials indicated they intend to restart distribution of their compounded weight-loss pill, but this time through different healthcare providers rather than Hims. Company management told Endpoints News they haven’t established a specific timeframe yet and want to “wait to see how everything settles out before we reintroduce it.”
The controversy began last month when Hims unveiled plans to sell a compounded oral version of the weight-loss drug semaglutide for $49 per dose. This pill was essentially a copycat version of pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, which had just hit the market weeks earlier.
The bold strategy quickly drew fierce opposition from both Novo Nordisk and federal regulators. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration responded by forwarding the matter to the Department of Justice and warning that it might limit access to the raw ingredients that compounding pharmacies use to create their own versions of brand-name medications.
The pharmaceutical industry felt the impact on Tuesday, with Novo Nordisk’s stock price falling nearly 2% in Denmark trading, while competitor Eli Lilly dropped 1.7% following the news report.
Neither Strive Pharmacy nor Novo Nordisk provided immediate responses when contacted for comment by Reuters.
