Foundayo passes 40,000 weekly US prescriptions

Eli Lilly's Foundayo, an oral GLP-1 medicine for obesity, crossed 40,000 weekly U.S. prescriptions for the first time twenty weeks after its launch. IQVIA data cited by Citi put the drug at 40,862 total prescriptions for the week, a rebound after a small dip the week before ^[1].

The milestone is notable, but it also shows how much ground Foundayo still has to make up. Novo Nordisk's Wegovy pill, a version of semaglutide taken by mouth, had already reached roughly 57,000 weekly scripts by its sixth week on the market. Twenty weeks into Foundayo's own launch, it took more than three times as long to reach a lower weekly number ^[1].

By the same week, the Wegovy pill itself was posting about 175,000 scripts, slightly down from 176,000 the week before, according to IQVIA figures. The oral pill made up 35% of all Wegovy prescriptions, a share that held steady week over week. Across both the pill and the injectable version, total Wegovy scripts came in a little above 500,000, down 0.8% from the prior week ^[1].

Jefferies analysts, in an Aug. 21 note cited in the tracker, said Wegovy volumes have been largely flat since the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program began on July 1. That program offers coverage for certain weight-loss drugs, including Foundayo, for a $50 monthly copayment, according to the tracker's earlier updates ^[1].

Despite the gap between the two oral drugs, the broader obesity market split has stayed steady. Lilly's injectable Zepbound and Novo's Wegovy franchise have kept roughly a 60%-40% market share between them, with Lilly holding the larger share as of this update ^[1].

Why it matters for patients

For people deciding between an oral GLP-1 option and an injectable one, prescription counts are one signal of how quickly doctors and pharmacies are adopting a newer drug. Foundayo's slower ramp-up compared with the Wegovy pill may reflect factors beyond how well the drug works, including insurance coverage timing. The tracker notes that CVS, one of the three major pharmacy benefit managers, did not begin covering Foundayo until June 1, months after Wegovy had full coverage from its first week ^[1].

The tracker also flags a data limitation: IQVIA may be undercounting Foundayo prescriptions written through telehealth, meaning the true weekly total could be somewhat higher than the reported 40,862 figure ^[1]. Patients trying to gauge how established or accessible a given drug is at their local pharmacy should keep in mind that national prescription tallies do not capture insurance approval rates, cost after copays, or regional coverage differences.

What happens next

According to later entries in the same tracker, Foundayo's scripts continued climbing after this Aug. 28 update, reaching 44,000 by Sept. 4 and 47,500 by Sept. 11, alongside a narrowing gap in new-prescription share within the oral obesity market ^[1]. Lilly executives have said they expect an