Hims & Hers is scrapping its plan for a knockoff Wegovy weight-loss pill. Here’s why
Telehealth company Hims & Hers dropped its plan to offer a knockoff version of the weight-loss pill Wegovy on Saturday — two days after it announced the new drug and one day after the Food and Drug Administration threatened to restrict access to the ingredients needed to copy popular weight-loss medications.
Hims had said Thursday that it would offer a compounded version of the new Wegovy pill that drugmaker Novo Nordisk just began selling last month. Novo immediately threatened to sue Hims, and then the FDA said Friday that it plans to take decisive steps to limit access to the active ingredients in popular GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy, Ozempic and Zepbound.
Hims’ own website still touted the new semaglutide pill offering Saturday afternoon — hours after it announced on X that it will no longer sell the medicine. Semaglutide is the chemical name for Wegovy.
“Since launching the compounded semaglutide pill on our platform, we’ve had constructive conversations with stakeholders across the industry. As a result, we have decided to stop offering access to this treatment,” Hims said in its statement. “We remain committed to the millions of Americans who depend on us for access to safe, affordable, and personalized care.”
Hims didn’t say Saturday whether it will make any changes to the compounded versions of injectable weight-loss medications it has been selling as a result of the FDA action.
The San Francisco-based company had planned to significantly undercut Novo’s price of $149 per month for the Wegovy pill by selling its version at $49 for the first month and $99 per month thereafter. Hims and other similar companies got started several years ago by offering cheap generic versions of drugs for hair loss, erectile dysfunction and other health issues before branching out into the multibillion market for obesity medications.
Novo plans to tout its new FDA-approved Wegovy pill in a celebrity-filled Super Bowl ad on Sunday. The Danish pharmaceutical giant didn’t immediately comment Saturday on Hims’ decision to drop the knockoff. Rival drugmaker Eli Lilly has said that it expects the FDA to approve an oral version of its orforglipron weight loss medication later this spring. But Wegovy is the first pill to hit the market.
The compounded medicine that Hims had planned to sell wasn’t approved and had not gone through trials to demonstrate that it would be effective.
The FDA permits specialty pharmacies and other companies to make compounded versions of brand name drugs when they are in short supply. And the booming demand for GLP-1 drugs in recent years prompted companies like Hims to jump into the multibillion-dollar market for the drugs, with many patients willing to pay cash.
In 2024, the FDA said that GLP-1 drugs were no longer in a shortage, which was expected to put an end to the compounding. But companies like Hims relied on an exception to keep selling their versions of the medications because the practice is still permitted when a prescription is customized for the patient.
—Josh Funk, AP Business Writer