Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen: “Italy plays a strategic role for us”

Italy plays an important role and soon it will also be a market where we produce and invest, because one of the three plants is located in Agnani after the acquisition of Catalent. We continue to invest when we have strategic locations because that is where we have qualified talent. But Italy is also a country where we do clinical development: Novo Nordisk Italy is actually a clinical development hub, i.e. a clinical research center in areas where Novo Nordisk is already active, such as diabetes, obesity and rare diseases, as well as other therapeutic areas such as cardiovascular, cardiometabolic and Alzheimer’s disease.

In practice, is one of your goals to prevent obesity?

This is the next research frontier. We have an Obesity Prevention Centre in Oxford that is looking at how to predict who will develop the disease and how to actually prevent it. When we started working on obesity 25 years ago, everyone told us it was impossible to cure obesity. It’s a difficult area of ​​medicine, past innovations have failed and even drugs have proven dangerous. So it’s impossible, but we have found the miracle cure and our purpose as a company is to drive change to beat serious chronic diseases.

What about the sustainability of healthcare systems and accessibility for patients?

Interestingly, the prices of our leading innovative products for diabetes and obesity today are similar to the prices of the previous generation products. So, in most markets, the latest generation products that are much better than the previous generation products are priced more or less the same. The reason there is so much discussion about drug prices today is that more patients are actually using them. They do so because the drug has the benefits of regulating blood sugar levels, reducing weight, and reducing the risk of cardiovascular and kidney disease. So, we should also discuss the value of the treatment and how much the health system can save by reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, one of the leading causes of death. This is of great value to society as a whole.