GLP-1 Agonists: Our ChatGPT Moment in Preventive Medicine and Healthy Longevity
Image: Google DeepMind
I’ve been at a number of healthspan meetings recently at which speakers have said: ‘What we need is our ChatGPT moment.” My response is: we already have it, and it’s called GLP-1 agonists!
Why do I say this? Well, first - just like ChatGPT, I don’t need to explain what they are. Everyone has heard of them, although not everyone can spell them out: Glucagon-like Peptide-1 agonists. The first was Ozempic from Novo-Nordisk, but there are now products in the market or in the pipeline from Lilly, Pfizer, Sanofi, GSK, AstraZeneca, and Amgen. And a score of other companies are scrambling to enter the race. From a $12 billion market in 2022, the market is set to grow at nearly 20% per annum. The class of drugs is expected to become the largest ever in the history of pharmaceuticals.
More important than sheer market scale, they are preventive drugs. Whether injected or taken orally, they enable weight loss, manage blood glucose in diabetes, but also show promise in reducing rates of cardiovascular, kidney, and neurodegenerative disease by reducing inflammation. They even seem to increase fertility. Almost a panacea.
To me, what they demonstrate is that people and insurers will pay for prevention, but also that typical on-patent drug prices force their use to be restricted. But this in turn will reduce as more and more competition enters and prices fall.
Of course - as with any drugs given to millions - there is rightly a focus on potential side effects, including gastrointestinal effects, headaches, dizziness, etc. But these do not seem to stop many overweight people from paying out of their own pockets across the US for the benefits of weight reduction, even if they know that they won’t be able to stop without seeing the weight coming back on unless they make permanent changes in their lifestyle.
So, why do I say this is our ChatGPT moment? Because we are learning, patients and health systems alike, that it is worthwhile to fund a class of therapeutics targeted at the prevention of chronic disease and - although the evidence is still sketchy, and in animal models - slowing aging itself and even reversing age-related transcriptomic changes in brain cells.
So we need to build on this case example our confidence that, as new classes of preventive therapies emerge and receive proper clinical testing and regulatory approval, we will see the healthy longevity therapy market become one of the most impactful, in terms of the healthspan of millions.
Best regards,
Richard
