Federal regulators on Wednesday approved Eli Lilly’s new weight-loss pill, a second daily oral medication to treat obesity and other weight-related conditions.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted accelerated approval to orforgliprone, a GLP-1 drug that works like widely used injectable drugs to mimic the natural hormone that controls appetite and feelings of fullness.
The drug, which will be branded as Foundayo, is expected to begin shipping on Monday. People with insurance may be able to get the drug starting at $25 a month using a Lilly debit card, the company said. Prices for people paying cash range from $149 per month to $349 per month, depending on the dosage.
The new pill joins drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy oral pill, which has prompted more than 600,000 prescriptions in the United States since its approval in December.
This April 2026 photo provided by Eli Lilly shows the manufacturing of the company’s weight loss pill, Foundayo, at a factory in Carolina, Puerto Rico.
Eli Lilly via AP
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Eli Lilly’s drug as part of a new program aimed at reducing drug approval times. The agency said it reviewed the company’s application within 50 days.
In a clinical trial of more than 3,000 obese adults, participants who received the highest dose of orforgliliprone, 36 milligrams, lost 11.2% of their body weight — about 25 pounds on average — over more than 16 months. This compared with a weight loss of 2.1%, or less than 5 pounds, in patients who received a placebo, or dummy pills, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Both Lilly and Novo Nordisk pills resulted in less weight loss than the average achieved with Lilly’s injectable Zepbound, which resulted in an average weight loss of 21%, or Novo Nordisk’s injectable Wegovy, which averaged about 15%.
Both once-daily pills promise relief, but orforgliprone is a small-molecule GLP-1 drug that can be taken without restrictions. You should take a Wijovi pill, which is a peptide, with a sip of water in the morning on an empty stomach, waiting for 30 minutes before eating or drinking.
The study found that orforgliprone users also saw improvements in waist circumference, blood pressure, triglyceride levels, and cholesterol levels.
Side effects, mostly gastrointestinal problems, caused 5% to 10% of orforgliliprone study participants to stop treatment, compared with about 3% in the placebo group.
About 1 in 8 people in the United States have used injectable GLP-1 medications, according to a survey by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group. But many have difficulty affording the expensive injections.
The pill, produced by Indianapolis-based Lilly, will be included in the Trump administration’s deal to lower prices for GLP-1 drugs.
Shares of ELi Lilly and Company rose more than 4% in Wednesday afternoon trading.
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AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.
Dr. Taban Buch, a preventive cardiologist at Northwell, was interviewed for WABC-TV’s Stacy Sager for this story.
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