The blockbuster obesity drugs Ozempic and Wegovy have sent sales soaring for Danish pharma company Novo Nordisk, up 25% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2023 alone, and the company forecasts more growth this year. But even as Novo Nordisk enjoys mammoth success from its inventions, its scientists have begun working on the next generation of weight-loss drugs they believe could eclipse the booming market of those currently available: drugs to keep people from becoming obese in the first place.
“The real big frontier is when we start to talk about prevention,” Marcus Schindler, Novo Nordisk’s chief scientist and executive vice president for research and early development, told Fortune in mid-June, sitting in the airy top-floor lounge in the company’s headquarters near Copenhagen. “There are particular biological systems that kick in earlier, before you actually have full-blown obesity,” he says. “We are starting to ask, 'What if we could stop those processes from happening?’”
