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Roche (ROG.SW) and Zealand Pharma (ZEAL.CO) stocks are in focus after the company announced an agreement to make amylin, an obesity drug, in a deal valued at $5.3 billion.
Yahoo Finance Senior Health Reporter Anjalee Khemlani joins Market Domination Co-Hosts Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton to examine what the deal means for the pair of pharmaceutical companies and competitors like Eli Lilly (LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NVO).
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
with more Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Kamalani. So, what's the drug? How is it different from some of the other ones?
Yeah, and actually, it's taking on more Novo than Lily, and I'll get to why. So, the $5.3 billion deal from Roche is for this drug, which is basically like a GLP-1 in the same way that the GLP-1s today mimic something in the body. This drug that Zealand has mimics a different hormone that is secreted at the same time as insulin. And so that is, it's called amylin, and that's what the focus is, is this drug. There's your definition right there. So, what Roche is looking at is either producing this treatment separately for amylin and co-producing, co-marketing, and getting the revenue off of that, or also using it with one of its GLP-1 candidates which is currently in the pipeline. Right now, this drug is in phase two. So waiting to see the rest of the data on how it stacks up. But the reason why this is important, especially for Novo, is because it's a new contender in the same space, especially if Roche decides to combine it with its own drug. 'Cause just earlier this week, we got data from Novo Nordisk about its Cagrisema drug. And that, you know, wasn't too impressive, and that's a similarly GLP-1 plus amylin dual combination drug. So that's why it's important for the comparison. If you see the stocks today, Roche up a little bit on the news, Zealand of course skyrocketing on the news, Novo the most impacted, even though Lily did get a bit of a dip. So, as you can see that on your screen. So that's sort of where we are and how this stacks up. Analysts are still waiting to see exactly how the drug compares to Novo Nordisk's Cagrisema, but also how it compares to the overall GLP-1 space. Do we still need, like I said before, you know, more drugs doing the same?
Interesting. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Yeah.