Ro to offer lower-price vials of weight loss drug Zepbound by teaming up with Eli Lilly

Direct-to-consumer health-care startup Ro on Wednesday said its platform will now offer more affordable single-dose vials of the weight loss drug Zepbound through a new partnership with Eli Lilly, which aims to streamline access to the popular treatment. 

Ro said it will offer a “complete end-to-end” experience on a single platform and app, allowing eligible patients to receive a diagnosis and a prescription for Zepbound and have vials of the drug delivered to their homes. That is made possible through a first-of-a-kind integration with Eli Lilly’s direct-to-consumer website, LillyDirect, which already offers home delivery of Zepbound vials through a third-party digital pharmacy, Gifthealth.

Gifthealth will dispense the vials to patients who receive Zepbound prescriptions through a provider affiliated with Ro. 

Zepbound vials are a cash-pay product offered only through LillyDirect, meaning patients pay for it themselves with cash at a lower cost than the autoinjector form of the drug. The vials have the “most affordable” price of a branded GLP-1 drug before insurance, according to Ro. GLP-1s, a class of medications that mimic gut hormones to tamp down appetite and regulate blood sugar, have skyrocketed in demand over the last two years. 

“Patients usually have to go to multiple places to get Lilly’s drug, like the doctor’s office then a pharmacy,” Ro co-founder and CEO Zachariah Reitano told CNBC in an interview. “This integration really creates a seamless patient experience where they don’t have to go anywhere else. They can access doctors, labs and a pharmacy that will give them access to Zepbound vials all in one place.” 

Ro runs a weight loss program that already prescribes Zepbound in a single-dose autoinjector pen, which patients can directly inject under their skin with the click of a button. But that form of the drug is far more expensive than vials, costing around $1,000 per month before insurance. 

The 2.5-milligram and 5-milligram single-dose vials of Zepbound cost $399 per month and $549 per month before insurance, respectively, making them more accessible to those who don’t have insurance coverage for the drug. Eli Lilly began offering those vials through LillyDirect in August. 

“Whether you’re covered by insurance, or whether you want the most affordable branded cash-pay GLP-1, which is the Zepbound vials, you can get all of those by coming to Ro,” Reitano said, noting that the company will help eligible patients determine which form of the drug is best for them based on their insurance. 

He acknowledged that roughly $400 to $500 per month for Zepbound is “still out of reach for many, but it is now far more in reach than” $1,000 or more.

The popularity of expensive treatments such as Zepbound and Novo Nordisk‘s weight loss injection Wegovy has led to widespread shortages in the U.S. That issue has since subsided after Eli Lilly and Nordisk raced to ramp up manufacturing capacity for the drugs. 

Still, cheaper compounded versions of GLP-1s have gained traction amid the limited supply of the branded medications. Eli Lilly is working to expand access to branded Zepbound in what appears to be a bid to crack down on compounded versions of the drug. 

Patrik Jonsson, Eli Lilly’s president of cardiometabolic health, said in a release on Tuesday that the goal of the new integration is to “break down barriers and provide patients with safe and effective options they can rely on.”

The FDA is currently reconsidering its decision to take Zepbound off its drug shortages list following a lawsuit from a trade association representing compounding pharmacies. Removing Zepbound from that shortages list will essentially prevent compounding pharmacies from making custom versions of the drug. 

If that ends up being the case, Reitano said Ro “will both follow all applicable laws and guidance” under the FDA and also “fight to make sure that our patients have access to the most effective products and most affordable products.”