Novo Nordisk Terminates Collaboration with Hims & Hers

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The FDA had resolved the shortage of Wegovy in April, and telehealth providers were advised to stop selling compounded semaglutide products. Novo Nordisk said that Hims & Hers continues to offer these compounded drugs.

Novo Nordisk will no longer be working with Hims & Hers Health, and direct access to Wegovy (semaglutide) will no longer be available. In a news release, Novo Nordisk said the collaboration ended because Hims & Hers continues to offer compounded products for obesity.

Related: Novo Nordisk Offers Wegovy Through Telehealth Providers, Including Hims & Hers

In April 2025, Novo Nordisk teamed up with several telehealth providers, including Hims & Hers, to offer access to Wegovy injection 2.4 mg through CenterWell Pharmacy, which is the dispensing pharmacy managing prescription fulfillment and delivery for NovoCare Pharmacy.

Because the FDA had resolved the shortage of Wegovy in April, telehealth providers were advised to stop selling compounded semaglutide products. But in its news release, Novo Nordisk said that Hims & Hers continues to offer compounded semaglutide drugs under the guise of personalization.

Dave Moore

Dave Moore

“We will work with telehealth companies to provide direct access to Wegovy that share our commitment to patient safety – and when companies engage in illegal sham compounding that jeopardizes the health of Americans, we will continue to take action,” Dave Moore, executive vice president, U.S. Operations, of Novo Nordisk, said in the news release.

Of concern, the company said, is that compounded products are manufactured by suppliers in China. According to a report from the Brookings Institution, the FDA has never authorized or approved the manufacturing processes used by any of these foreign suppliers to make semaglutide. The report also found that a large share of these Chinese suppliers were never inspected by the FDA, and many of those that were inspected had drug quality assurance violations.

FDA officials have expressed concern about the safety of compounded GLP-1 products, issuing an update in April 2025 about multiple reports of adverse events and dosing errors from compounded obesity drugs. Agency officials said some of the compounded GLP-1 therapies are using the salt forms, including semaglutide sodium and semaglutide acetate, which are different active ingredients than are used in the approved drugs. Regulators said they do not have information on whether these salts have the same chemical and pharmacologic properties as the active ingredient in the approved drug.

But even the Brookings report said that compounded semaglutide is unlikely to end since current FDA guidance allows for compounding as long as it is not essentially a copy.

Wegovy was approved to treat obesity in June 2021, and it is available as an injection in 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 1.7 mg, and 2.4 mg of the once-weekly, single-dose pen. Its list price is $1,349, and the company said that 90% of patients have a co-pay of $0 to $25 per month.

In March 2025, Novo Nordisk launched NovoCare Pharmacy to provide Wegovy direct-to-patient in all dose strengths for $499 per month for self-paying patients. In May, Novo Nordisk offered self-pay patients Wegovy at a cost of $199 for the first month. The offer expires on June 30, 2025.

In 2024, sales of Wegovy and Novo Nordisk’s other semaglutide products (Ozempic and Rybelsus, which both treat type 2 diabetes) increased 27% to $39.4 billion. Sales of Wegovy alone grew 57% to $9.4 billion.

The three semaglutide drugs are at the top of CMS's next 15 Medicare Part D drugs to be subject to price negotiations as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Negotiations with participating drug companies begin this year, and the new prices will become effective in 2027. The three semaglutide products had total Part D gross costs of $14.4 billion from November 2023 to October 2024, according to CMS.

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