(Yicai) May 21 -- Chinese regulators have given the green light to Eli Lilly’s diabetes drug tirzepatide, the US pharmaceutical giant said.

The drug has been approved for treating diabetes, with Eli Lilly’s application for it to be used for long-term weight management still under review, the company said today. Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in the firm’s Mounjaro diabetes drug and its Zepbound weight-management drug. 

The treatment’s main competitor is Ozempic, a diabetes drug made by Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, which was approved in China in 2021.

Tirzepatide came onto the US market in May 2022 for type 2 diabetes and secured approval in the country as a weight-loss treatment last November. Tirzepatide’s sales for diabetes and weight-loss totaled USD5.3 billion last year, or 16 percent of Eli Lilly’s revenue, its annual financial report showed.

China’s National Medical Products Administration accepted Eli Lilly’s application for the use of tirzepatide in weight management last August. Novo Nordisk is also applying for Chinese approval of its weight-loss drug Wegovy, which the firm said it expects to get this year.

The pairs’ weight-loss drugs are classed as GLP-1 agonists, which have sold well globally in recent years and for which there is a rapidly growing market in China. There were ongoing clinical tests for 106 GLP-1 diet pills in China as of last August, about 40 percent of which have been developed by domestic companies, per data from patent information provider Patsnap.

China’s GLP-1 drug market will be worth more than CNY50 billion (USD6.9 billion) by 2030, according to a prediction made by consultants Frost & Sullivan.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Tom Litting