In the last few days, people have been salivating at the $50B annual sales projection of Eli Lilly's Mounjaro.
I have a different angle of looking at it. I'd like to applaud Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk's leadership teams for sticking to their expertise in metabolic diseases and following patient unmet needs, as opposed to following what's hot and sexy. I have no doubt that in the last 10 years the craze for oncology has crowded out innovation in many other therapeutic areas with great unmet needs, like cardiometabolic, neurology, etc. Just take a look at how many PD1 inhibitors are out there! I think the investor community also contributed to the oncology craze. It's hard for a startup to resist PD1 and IO when you could get millions of dollars by simply putting down PD1 and oncology in your pitch deck vs. repeatedly getting turned down for pursuing other high-umnet-need diseases.
For the biotech startup I advise, I always advise them that they have to use patient unmet needs as a North Star when choosing where to apply their technology, not simply follow what's trendy. Proof? Look no further than Mounjaro!
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