Sandoz CEO Richard Saynor predicts biosimilars referencing semaglutide to enter the Canadian market in early in 2026, as the patent protection for Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster drug looms.
“No one’s actually got an approval yet, but certainly we would expect to see entrance in that market in Q1 [or] Q2 next year,” Saynor said at the Financial Times Global Pharma and Biotech Summit on 12 November.
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Novo markets semaglutide as Ozempic and Wegovy for type 2 diabetes treatment and weight loss respectively. Inaction by the Danish drugmaker allowed semaglutide’s base patent to expire in 2020. This was via a failure to pay a fee to keep the patent running, as first reported by Science. Given the maintenance fee was just C$250, it is a decision that has confused regulatory experts in the pharma industry. The final Canadian protection afforded by data exclusivity around diabetes is due to expire in 2026.
Sandoz, one of the largest generics and biosimilars manufacturers in the world, aims to be there when the market opens to harness the commercial opportunity.
“It’s a bizarre story. Canada’s the second largest semaglutide market in the world. For whatever reason, they failed to renew a patent,” Saynor said at the summit.
Saynor confirmed that Sandoz has submitted a biosimilar for approval and will launch in Canada as soon as it receives the regulatory go-ahead.
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By GlobalDataOzempic has a list price of around C$147 yet it is currently unclear at what price biosimilars will enter the market at. Saynor commented that it is difficult to forecast how market dynamics will play out, given that semaglutide has a complex set of economic and supply chain considerations.
“I’ve refused to give any guidance, because, honestly, I see Canada as an experiment. We’ll learn from it. We’ll see how it evolves. This is at least a 10-year journey, if not longer. It’s an opportunity but it’s not the basis of our guidance or our business,” Saynor added.
Other countries, including Brazil, Turkey and India, have looming patent expiries for semaglutide in 2026. While the horizons for the drug’s protection in the US and Europe are further away, the entry of lower cost glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) could market a significant paradigm shift in the treatment’s accessibility.
According to Saynor, however, there are too many variables to accurately predict the market’s ongoing movement.
“You’ve got this whole weird set of dynamics in that actually the constraint is supply, not demand, and as the price points come down, the market will expand,” he commented.
Weight loss and diabetes jabs have been a particular target of pricing reforms introduced by the Trump administration in the US. Just last week, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly reached deals with the White House that will see its GLP-1RA brands drop in price.
