Novo sees advantages vs Byetta LAR

By Bill Berkrot

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Novo Nordisk A/S (NOVOb.CO) said on Thursday it believes its experimental type 2 diabetes treatment will be as effective as the Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.N) drug expected to be its main rival and may have advantages that will win over patients.

The Danish drugmaker is considering boosting its already large U.S. sales force to leverage a potential one-year head start that its drug, liraglutide, may have over the long-acting version of Lilly's Byetta, Novo's finance chief, Jesper Brandgaard, said at the Reuters Health Summit in New York.

The added sales muscle would also expand Novo's ability to promote the drug to general practitioners, Brandgaard said.

Based on available data, Wall Street analysts believe liraglutide has a clear advantage over the version of Byetta already on the market. How it will measure up against the long-acting version is the biggest question mark hanging over Novo's closely watched drug.

"We believe that the efficacy that you will see with Byetta LAR and from liraglutide are likely to be similar," Brandgaard said.

And the perceived advantage of once a week dosing with Byetta LAR versus daily injections with liraglutide may not be the competitive edge it appears, he said.

"Intuitively you think, that's convenience, once a week compared to daily," Brandgaard said.

But he said it may be easier from a patient compliance standpoint to inject the drug at the same time every day compared to remembering to take it once a week.

And, he noted, using liraglutide may actually be easier and more pleasant for patients than the Lilly drug being developed along with Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc (AMLN.O).

"From what we understand, Byetta LAR will be administered using a significantly thicker needle than the super fine needles for Byetta and liraglutide," he said.

"The injection process is more cumbersome in that you have a powder and a solvent, and you first have to mix it to dissolve the powder and get it up into a syringe, and then inject yourself. Whereas with liraglutide, you have a pen, you dial a dose, you inject yourself, it's done," Brandgaard said.

The drug is preloaded into a small ballpoint-like pen device that delivers measured doses.

"The feedback from investors is that they were confident that we have this one-year window, and on top of that is confirmation that we have the administration advantage of being in a traditional insulin-like device," Brandgaard said.

Liraglutide is an engineered version of the human GLP-1 molecule that stimulates release of insulin only when glucose levels become too high.

"We think the GLP-1 is a market that can move the injectables from previously really being late-stage type 2 treatment to become earlier to mid-stage type 2 treatment," Brandgaard said.