Eli Lilly CFO Talks Splitting Tirzepatide into Two Brands for Obesity and Diabetes

In a talk at the Morgan Stanley healthcare conference this week, Eli Lilly’s CFO Anat Ashkenazi spoke about the company’s deliberations in deciding whether to split Tirzepatide into two brands, one for diabetes and one for obesity. Lilly has done this before with Prozac (fluoxetine), making a new brand for premenstrual dysphoric disorder. It did not do the same for the drug Cialis, an erectile dysfunction drug also indicated for benign prostatic hyperplasia.

According to Ashkenazi, “There are benefits to having a single brand associated with marketing efficiencies — you create a very large brand (and) recognition associated with one name,” she said, adding “I often get the question from a payer perspective, is it better to have one brand versus two brands? Payers can control utilization if they wanted to, the tools exist. But we’ll take all these into consideration when we make a decision on tirzepatide for obesity versus a type 2 diabetes indication.”

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(Source: Endpoints, September 14^th, 2022)