Folks have been using the GLP-1 wave to attain fast and vital weight reduction. However given the drug’s impact on controlling sort 2 diabetes, it’s no shock that DexCom CEO Jake Leach desires to trip that wave as properly. DexCom makes steady glucose monitoring gadgets (CGMs) which might be worn 24/7 by sufferers. They had been initially used for the sort 1 inhabitants that wanted them to know when to take insulin and handle their illness however — as proof of their efficacy has grown — CGMs at the moment are prescribed for sort 2 diabetes sufferers as properly.
“So we’ve sort of been on this enterprise of how will we use the CGMs to optimize pharmaceutical therapies, insulin being the primary, [but] there’s alternatives with GLP-1s,” Leach stated in a latest interview. “There’s every kind of alternatives for us to information remedy for each the doctor and the affected person to work collectively to get a greater final result quicker.”
CGMs give diabetics an estimate of their glucose ranges by measuring glucose within the interstitial fluid surrounding cells. Blood assessments provide you with A1c outcomes which might be thought of a greater metric however the fixed pricks and blood attracts are burdensome to say the least. Neither is it potential to consistently do fingerpricks to get real-time knowledge. CGMs that should be prescribed by suppliers have a tiny sensor that’s inserted below the pores and skin to offer an correct sense of glucose ranges all through the day.
Like weight problems, sort 2 diabetes is a metabolic illness, and GLP-1s are efficient at suppressing urge for food, thereby impacting metabolism and insulin ranges.
“GLP-1s drive nice outcomes. However I really feel and have seen in all the info we have a look at that while you use CGM and GLP-1 collectively, you get a greater final result [mainly because] they work on various things,” Leach stated. “CGM works on understanding how totally different vitamin and totally different weight loss program selections, exercise ranges, all these issues, the way it truly impacts your glucose. Should you’re taking a GLP-1, the CGM goes to point out you ways significantly better you’re doing while you’re taking it.”
Whereas in case you are on GLP-1s alone and never monitoring glucose ranges, “the one actual suggestions you’ve gotten on the way you’re doing is your weight” and that affect may take as much as 90 days while you measure your A1c, Leach identified.
CGMs may assist in tailoring one’s weight loss program.
“I believe that among the learnings which might be so essential about correct vitamin don’t come from a GLP-1. It comes from CGM,” he declared, though he wasn’t capable of say how massive the universe of sort 2 diabetes sufferers with GLP-1s is.
Leach additionally famous that the usage of CGMs in tandem with GLP-1s in individuals battling sort 2 diabetes is economically viable too.
“I believe the CGM is such an economical resolution,” he stated. “When you consider the price of CGM, for any individual to make use of CGM for a 12 months, we’re speaking a couple of $1,000, proper? That’s a fairly compelling monetary argument while you have a look at the healthcare financial savings.”
Certainly, a examine to find out whether or not CGM use for GLP-1 sufferers is cost-effective for payers seems to echo Leach. That examine was accomplished by a doctor marketing consultant of Abbott and two of its workers. Abbott is a DexCom competitor and has its personal CGM product, the FreeStyle Libre. Although Abbott’s know-how differs from DexCom’s — Kevin Sayer, the earlier CEO of DexCom, as soon as described the FreeStyle Libre as not a real CGM — the product has been gaining market share.
To counter that and cement Dexcom’s place because the main innovator on the planet of CGMs, the San Diego-based firm is planning to launch the DexCom G8 sensor, which is anticipated make the most recent DexCom wearable CGM system the smallest CGM on the planet, when accessible.
“It’s going to be essentially the most superior wearable system we’ve ever produced,” Leach stated, in accordance with the webcast of his remarks on Jan 12 on the annual J.P. Morgan convention. “The design modifications will guarantee improved sensing in addition to error detection. The sensor will even be 50% smaller in dimension than the G7 sensor, which implies the wearable system would be the smallest CGM accessible available on the market when it launches.”
No launch date has been specified but.
Regardless of the driver — worldwide gross sales growth, leaping on the GLP-1 bandwagon, or the superior, smallest CGM launch — DexCom and its inventory value badly want a successful story. The inventory reached its peak in November 2021 when it traded over $160. The market has since slashed its worth to lower than half attributable to a wide range of missteps, together with a gross sales restructuring that didn’t go as deliberate and an FDA warning letter over the situation of two manufacturing vegetation.
The inventory at the moment trades close to $70. The markets will weigh in once more on Feb 12 when the firm studies its fourth-quarter and financial 2025 earnings.
