Aspen Pharmacare is gearing up to launch one of the world’s first generic versions of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide in Canada, where the GLP-1 weight-loss injection has officially lost patent protection – but where it is likely to be up against some stiff competition, reports Business Day.
Medicines regulator Health Canada has received nine regulatory filings for generic semaglutide, apart from Aspen: they include Canadian-based Apotex, Switzerland’s Sandoz and Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals, according to its website.
Canada is considered a test case for generic pharmaceutical manufacturing companies competing for a slice of the massive market for generic GLP-1 weight loss jabs, which until now have been too expensive for most governments and health insurers to cover at scale.
“Whoever performs there is likely to perform across the rest of the globe. We might be first, we might be fourth, but we’ll be there,” Aspen Pharmacare CEO Stephen Saad said last week.
“The patent goes in January … (but) nobody is coming to market in January and it’s highly unlikely in the first quarter of the year,” he said.
While Novo Nordisk’s patents still have several years to run in the US and UK, they are due to end in many other large markets in 2026, including Brazil, India and China.
In addition to manufacturing generic semaglutide, Aspen has an agreement with Eli Lilly to market and distribute its GLP-1 Mounjaro in SA. Without providing figures, Saad said sales of Mounjaro, registered in SA for type 2 diabetes in 2024 and for weight loss in 2025, had exceeded expectations and were “shooting the lights out”.
He previously said Aspen was registering Mounjaro in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with product launches expected in 2026.
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Cheaper obesity drugs in Indian and Chinese pipelines