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MM&M Fast Break. I’m Lesha Bushak, Pharma Editor at MM&M with Dr. Jeffrey Egler and Jeff Cook from Nuum. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having us. It’s great to be here. Thank you. So today Nuum announced an exciting new program designed for weight loss. It’s called the Microdose Steel P1 program. Tell me a little bit about it and specifically what does the name mean, Microdose Steel P1? What What does that mean?

So, the announcement today is that we’re now offering doses that are up to 25% of the maintenance dose of GLP-1. So, microdose essentially means a small dose. It could start much smaller than that, but it goes up to 25%.

The reason we did this is we’ve seen based on our data from our GLP-1 Rx program, which has been running for now almost a year, that one of the main reasons people stop and discontinue a GLP-1 is side effects. And research kind of bears us out. And we constructed this microdose GLP-1 program such that only 70% the 70% of people will report no side effects while achieving meaningful weight loss.

So we wanted to balance meaningful weight loss, 5% to 10% of body weight, balance that against side effects where the vast majority of people would have receive no side effect. And so that’s how we constructed this program. And I want to get into a little bit what the program entails, but one of the things that that’s interesting about this is that this is also personal for you. Um you posted on LinkedIn earlier today that you’ve been microdosing GLP-1s yourself since October.

Tell me a little bit about how you got started with that and what your journey has been with that. Yeah.

So um you know I was felt reasonably healthy but I was surprised by a high A1C in October where it was on the high end almost to pre-diabetes and my doctor prescribed a low dose GLP-1 and the dose at that point, which is basically the dose I stay at, which is about 10% of the highest the maintenance dose.

And I saw profound improvement in both the A1C on C-level, which I I took a a blood reading in March and again recently and it’s now well within a a normal range. But I also lost 12 pounds. I became more active. I I was reasonably active but that kind of activity level increased to instead of three or four times a week to every day.

I find myself more cognizant of what I’m eating and of course you think I’d be reasonably cognizant as the CEO of Nu. But it is clearly a benefit. And so we we see this play out in for our members, right?

Where if you if you pair a GLP-1 with a Habits program, you can get a synergistic effect because you’re essentially boosting the self-efficacy for health. People if they if they lose weight in the beginning of a Habits program, they’re more likely to stick with the Habits. If you introduce GLP-1, one, at the same time as you’re beginning a habits program, they can kind of feed into a virtuous cycle.

And so that’s, I saw it play out for myself personally going to be doing my first triathlon in six or seven years at my daughter’s behest. But I would say it made a profound improvement.

And we’ve been seeing a lot of new benefits about GLP-1s beyond obesity and diabetes is, you know, there’s more and more research showing that there’s benefits for cardiovascular health, substance abuse, inflammation. What do we know about the benefits of microdosing GLP-1s versus sort of taking the full dose, beyond reducing side effects?

You know, Jeff, you mentioned your own personal experience with it, but I’m curious, what Nume’s data has shown in terms of the the benefits of microdosing GLP-1s even beyond weight loss. Well, one of the things that we see is that a large proportion of our patients get the weight loss benefits that they’re looking for at a fraction of the dose.

So I want to say that about 25% or 30% of our patients are actually not increasing to a full standard dose, and they’re still getting the weight loss benefits that they want. And there’s a good number of our patients that are achieving their weight loss goals within the first four months based on lower doses.

But there’s also sciences that’s coming out beyond Nume Science that is demonstrating that these patients are beneficial for cardiovascular health, for renal health, for reducing inflammation.

And we’ve seen data that suggests that even doses as low as 0.1 to 0.2 milligrams, which is even lower or at the starting dose for our microdose program are showing reductions in fasting blood sugar and also in CRP, which is C-reactive protein, which is one of the primary markers of inflammation.

So, we think that physicians clinicians, and hopefully, the population at large will start to think of these medications well beyond what they’re currently being used for. We think about them as potential longevity agents. We like We want people to start thinking about well-being and how to be able to optimize their health rather than just waiting for disease and using these medications to treat themselves that. Absolutely.

It’s definitely sort of the start of a title change when it comes to um how people use dual P1s beyond obesity and diabetes. You know, let’s say that you have a patient who’s interested in in trying your microdose dual P1 program. You know, what are the steps that they go through to obtain their microdose? Um how does the program work? You know, what what’s their monthly cost? Um you know, how does the behavioral health component work? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure, I’d be happy to jump in. So um there’s an intake, there’s a clinical intake form that the person would fill out. They go to num.com. They would fill out that intake. If clinically qualified for a GLP-1, they will then be asked some additional information. A doctor reporting to Dr. Egler will review that intake. We’ll ask any further questions if there are any.

And then typically a a prescribing decision is made within 24 hours. From there, it would take typically a few days to a week to receive the medication to the door. At that time, you also receive access to the NuMe GLP-1 companion program.

So we marry the behavior change with the medication and that would give you access to our app for many protein high protein recipes, many workouts to drive resistance training and and combat any lean mass loss, as well as access to to certain other microhabit aspects of our of our program. So you would take the medication weekly and you would log that inside of the application.

And when you log the the medication, you would also be reporting any side effect if if there were any. And of course, in this case, we expect 70% or would not. But you would have the opportunity to log that. And depending on combination of weight loss cost speed, side effect profile and your BMI, a clinical decision will be made on titration by the doctor.

And by titration, of course, I mean moving up or down in dose from the from the original dose. AI is changing how we work. Talk and create. On November 13th in New York City, AI deciphered, the next stage of your evolution brings together the brands, platforms and minds leading that shift. Presented by PR Week, Campaign US and MMN. This one-day summit breaks down what’s working now and what’s coming next.

Here how AI is reshaping media, marketing, and the retail experience and find the tactics that fit your world. Register now at aidecipheredsummit.com. Use promo code pod to save $100. And um one of the big focuses for NUMIS is drug pricing and basically allowing patients to have affordable, accessible um versions of GLP-1s.

Um you know, we know that branded GLP-1s cost up to $1,000 a month for some patients and is are largely inaccessible. And Nume was previously offering compounded GLP-1s during the GLP-1 shortage. But that was resolved earlier this year when the FDA announced that the shortage was over.

How has Nume handled that change kind of from that compounded period of time to now and is this sort of part of your pivot in the post compounded period to kind of find ways to get accessible and affordable options to patients.

Yeah, so as you mentioned, we have been quite outspoken with respect to high price of medications in this country, which are tend to be five times, three to five times other parts of Europe. We even took out a Wall Street Journal back cover talking about a potential solution to this.

As it relates to the end of shortage, in this country, we have a compounding law framework, a 503A and 503B. During the shortage under provision 503B, compounding pharmacies may compound the medication given that the drug is in shortage. Whether in shortage or not, there’s a 503A regulation as well that speaks to personalized medicine.

If a medication is needed for an individual patient benefit and we generally the public health authorities and the legislation this particular piece of legislation made it clear in in when it was when it was written that the intention is not to get in between a doctor prescribing a needed patient a needed medication to a given patient, but that what it did do is it impose the requirement of documentation what that individual patient benefit is and why it might not be met by the standardized dosing or maybe needs a formulation change.

There would be multiple different ways. And so Nume we are are leveraging that 503A framework given given that the shortage has ended. In terms of the next steps of the MicroDose GLP-1 program, how do you plan to kind of advertise and market around it and to reach patients and HCPs? Yeah.

So we we are across multichannel from social to television to to everything in between. and podcasts and so forth. And so, I think we would include this with our existing kind of marketing mix. As you know, this does extend the existing we have an existing GLP-1 Rx program that does access the higher doses.

This is so we would leverage many of the same marketing channels that we use for that. Dr. Egler, do you want to speak to the physician and Sure. Well, basically what we want to be offering to people or explaining, educating people or that there are benefits to using lower doses. Our key principle is helping people to find the lowest effective dose.

We know that 35 plus percent of people are discontinuing the medication simply due to side effects alone, not even in taking into account the 50% of persons that discontinued because of cost. So we really want to stabilize the destabilization factors that lead to treatment failures across the board with these persons.

And so Jeff was mentioning early earlier that 70% of the people that will take GLPs will actually experience some sort of side effects, right? And then half of them will quit. Well, we’ve actually looked at our data and we’ve designed a smart dose protocol such that we know the doses that people tend to be more successful with.

And not only are we decreasing the dose, but we’re allowing for slower and more precise titration along that spectrum. So people can tolerate it. They can have a better experience. And like I mentioned before, and I want to be more precise with the data that I suggested before.

We’ve seen that 15 to 20% of our patients on GLP-1s are on low doses that would be considered microdoses six months into therapy, which either shows us that their progression is being limited by side effects because they probably don’t have additional options to reduce or slow their dosing or they’re already getting to their weight loss goal at those lower doses.

Sounds like there’s a lot of potential here with this new program. Final question is, what are you both kind of excited about moving ahead, looking forward to the rest of the year in terms of the GLP-1 landscape? you know, Dr. Egler maybe from the medical side of things and Jeff you know, maybe from the drug pricing side of things, but what are you both kind of excited to see come to fruition any new trends or any new horizons that you’re looking forward to?

I’m personally very excited about being able to see this happen in real time. We are seeing the data roll in that quite frankly either big pharma doesn’t have or we haven’t seen it, which is the benefit people can get at lower doses and with more precision adjustments to their programs.

So we’re going to be able to see people’s success their continuing on or their adherence to the program and ultimately getting to their goals rather than quitting.

The thing that I’m really excited about is potentially being able to see advancements in people’s biomarkers going beyond the scale victories, seeing what the other benefits of these drugs are in these different populations of people too so that we can really create a more robust set of data and confirmed statements and claims about what these medications are truly capable of, do I? Yeah.

I would echo all of that, of course. I think marrying the program to blood testing and biomarkers on a regular basis, I think what NuMe has is a tremendous data set where we have people actually logging their medications, their side effects, their actual weight because that’s part of the NuMe program.

We can tell if they’re are being adherent to the behavior change aspects of the program, if they’re earning their kind of new coin, which is part of our program. And what what this essentially enables is personalized medication at scale, right? Like um it doesn’t have to be a one-size-fits-all titration schedule where everyone ends up on the maximum dose.

That doesn’t necessarily make sense if there’s such success on a lower dose, as we’re seeing in in many, many patients. So, I I would say, the trend that probably most interests me is this trend towards longevity medicine. Dr.

Egler is practices in longevity medicine, but this ability to take longevity medicine and really democratize it, make it available to everyone at scale in an affordable way. That’s That’s what interests us. And we we see GLP-1 as well as metformin, which is in our formulary as well as HR our tea, which is in our formulary.

These are all, you know, critical pharmaceutical ingredients to what that program might have, healthy habits, exercise, eating well, of course, being other aspects of of that. But that’s ultimately what we’re building here. Definitely. I think that there’s, you know, this is one of the most exciting spaces in pharma, so we’ll be excited to keep an eye on it. Jeff and Dr. Egler, thank you so much for joining. Thank you.

The MMN Media Summit returns to New York City on October 30th. Top voices in health media and pharma marketing will share what’s working now and what’s coming next. On the agenda AI, retail media, personalization at scale, streaming and the expanding definition of the point of care. We’re talking strategy, consumer trust and data privacy. What matters, what’s moving and what it means for you. Register mm-mm-mediasummit.com Use promo code podcast to save $100.