Individuals have been using the GLP-1 wave to attain fast and vital weight reduction. However given the drug’s impact on controlling sort 2 diabetesit’s no shock that DexCom CEO Jake Leach desires to journey that wave as effectively. DexCom makes steady glucose monitoring gadgets (CGMs) which can be worn 24/7 by sufferers. They have 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 effectively.
“So we’ve sort of been on this enterprise of how will we use the CGMs to optimize pharmaceutical therapies, insulin being the primary, (however) there’s alternatives with GLP-1s,” Leach mentioned in a current 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 exams offer you A1c outcomes which can be thought of a greater metric however the fixed pricks and blood attracts are burdensome to say the least. Neither is it potential to always do fingerpricks to get real-time knowledge. CGMs that need to be prescribed by suppliers have a tiny sensor that’s inserted underneath 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 information we take a look at that if you use CGM and GLP-1 collectively, you get a greater final result (primarily as a result of) they work on various things,” Leach mentioned. “CGM works on understanding how totally different vitamin and totally different eating regimen selections, exercise ranges, all these issues, the way it truly impacts your glucose. In case you’re taking a GLP-1, the CGM goes to point out you the way a lot better you’re doing if you’re taking it.”
Whereas in case you are on GLP-1s alone and never monitoring glucose ranges, “the one actual suggestions you’ve on the way you’re doing is your weight” and that influence might take as much as 90 days if you measure your A1c, Leach identified.
CGMs also can assist in tailoring one’s eating regimen.
“I believe that a number of the learnings which can be so essential about correct vitamin don’t come from a GLP-1. It comes from CGM,” he declared, though he wasn’t in a position to say how huge 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 folks battling sort 2 diabetes is economically viable too.
“I believe the CGM is such a cheap resolution,” he mentioned. “When you consider the price of CGM, for any person to make use of CGM for a yr, we’re speaking a couple of $1,000, proper? That’s a reasonably compelling monetary argument if you take a look at the healthcare financial savings.”
Certainly, a research to find out whether or not CGM use for GLP-1 sufferers is cost-effective for payers seems to echo Leach. That research was achieved by a doctor guide 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 earth of CGMs, the San Diego-based firm is planning to launch the DexCom G8 sensor, which is predicted make the most recent DexCom wearable CGM machine the smallest CGM on the earth, when obtainable.
“It’s going to be essentially the most superior wearable system we’ve ever produced,” Leach mentioned, in line with the webcast of his remarks on Jan 12 on the annual J.P. Morgan convention. “The design adjustments will guarantee improved sensing in addition to error detection. The sensor will even be 50% smaller in measurement than the G7 sensor, which suggests the wearable machine would be the smallest CGM obtainable available on the market when it launches.”
No launch date has been specified but.
Regardless of the driver — worldwide gross sales enlargement, leaping on the GLP-1 bandwagon, or the superior, smallest CGM launch — DexCom and its inventory worth 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 resulting from quite a lot 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 crops.
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.
