A Shot in the Arm

In Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda famously sang, “I’m not throwin’ away my shot.” Well, he may be rethinking that commitment. Injectable drugs like Mounjaro and Ozempic have already dramatically changed the shape of things in the health industry, the food economy, and about half the bodies in Hollywood. But because these drugs require a weekly shot, there’s always been somewhat of a cap on their usage. That cap could be blown off soon. Daily Pill May Work as Well as Ozempic for Weight Loss and Blood Sugar. “In a way, the very existence of orforglipron is a triumph of modern chemistry. The injectable GLP-1 drugs are peptides — small fragments of proteins. (GLP stands for glucagon-like peptide.) Peptides are digested by the stomach … The solution was to find a small molecule — thousandths of the size of a peptide — that sinks into a tiny pocket in the protein that is the target for GLP-1s. When it sinks into the pocket, the protein changes shape just as it does when a GLP-1 binds to the whole protein. Finding that small molecule, Dr. Skovronsky said, was ‘the holy grail.'”