Endpoints has an interesting interview with Richard Saynor, the chairman of the US generics maker Sandoz. In this interview, he shares his views on Donald Trump’s impact on the industry, preparing for the launch of generic GLP-1s, and whether Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company actually competes with generic drugmakers, etc.
Of particular interest is the question about Sandoz’s plans to launch generic Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1, Ozempic is the most popular) in Canada.
Endpoint: You plan to potentially launch a generic GLP-1 in Canada and Brazil in 2026. What do you expect for the biosimilar market, both there and eventually in the US?
Saynor: Canada, we filed and are waiting for approval once the data exclusivity expires sometime in Q1 next year.
Interesting market. Novo never filed a patent in Canada. Never know why. I’m sure someone’s lost their job, but never mind. It’s the second-largest semaglutide market in the world.
Canada has an estimated population of 3 million with diabetes. That is not even in the top 25 of Diabetes Rates by Country 2025 list. Obviously, the bulk of Ozempic sold in Canada ends up in the USA. Nobody will give you the data for what fraction of Ozempic sold in Canada ends up in the USA, but you can safely guess that is more than the Canadian consumption.
Derek Lowe in his In the Pipeline column in Science magazine has additional insights. A Canadian Patent Database search showed that *”…Novo did file a patent there for semaglutide. . .but the last time they paid the annual maintenance fee on it was 2018! You can even find a letter where their lawyers send a refund request for the 2017 maintenance fee ($250) because Novo apparently wanted some more time to see if they wanted to pay it.
On the same date in 2019, the office sent a letter saying that “The fee payable to maintain the rights accorded by the above patent was not received by the prescribed due date…” By that time it was $450 with the late fee added, but that was apparently too much for Novo. They had a one year grace period to make it up, and apparently never did, so their patent lapsed in Canada. And as the Canadian authorities remind them, “Once a patent has lapsed it cannot be revived”.*
Novo Nordisk’s US patent on Ozempic expires in 2032. But with the impending launch of a generic alternative in Canada, they have a huge challenge in hand right now.
Saynor’s interview also includes this insight into the impact of Trump tariffs
“On tariffs, sticks will not change our behavior. We make next to no money. So why would I invest hundreds or billions of dollars to make even less money by onshoring? We’re the only antibiotic manufacturer in the Western world. It would cost me 3 billion and maybe three to five years to build a new factory in the US. Yet I would still be undercut by Asian players who sell at cents on the dollar. Unless there’s a structural benefit, my board is never going to approve that kind of spending on capital.
You need, then, to start talking about carrots. Reinforce Hatch-Waxman. Reward me for challenging patents and bringing products to the marketplace. Look at restricting patent abuse.
But if it’s just a tariff, two things will happen: Either we’ll try and put the price up. And if we can’t put the price up, and we’re losing money, we’ll withdraw the product. It’s that simple. ”