Folks have been using the GLP-1 wave to realize fast and vital weight reduction. However given the drug’s impact on controlling kind 2 diabetes, it’s no shock that DexCom CEO Jake Leach needs to journey that wave as nicely. DexCom makes steady glucose monitoring units (CGMs) which are 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 are actually prescribed for kind 2 diabetes sufferers as nicely.
“So we’ve form 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 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 assessments offer you A1c outcomes which are thought of a greater metric however the fixed pricks and blood attracts are burdensome to say the least. Neither is it attainable to always do fingerpricks to get real-time information. CGMs that need to be prescribed by suppliers have a tiny sensor that’s inserted underneath the pores and skin to present an correct sense of glucose ranges all through the day.
Like weight problems, kind 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 have a look at that whenever 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 completely different diet and completely different weight loss plan selections, exercise ranges, all these issues, the way it really impacts your glucose. When you’re taking a GLP-1, the CGM goes to indicate you the way a lot better you’re doing whenever you’re taking it.”
Whereas if you’re 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 influence may take as much as 90 days whenever you measure your A1c, Leach identified.
CGMs may assist in tailoring one’s weight loss plan.
“I feel that a few of the learnings which are so essential about correct diet don’t come from a GLP-1. It comes from CGM,” he declared, though he wasn’t in a position to say how massive the universe of kind 2 diabetes sufferers with GLP-1s is.
Leach additionally famous that the usage of CGMs in tandem with GLP-1s in folks battling kind 2 diabetes is economically viable too.
“I feel the CGM is such an economical answer,” he stated. “When you consider the price of CGM, for any individual to make use of CGM for a yr, we’re speaking a few $1,000, proper? That’s a reasonably compelling monetary argument whenever you have 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 accomplished 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 newest DexCom wearable CGM gadget the smallest CGM on the earth, when out there.
“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 adjustments will guarantee improved sensing in addition to error detection. The sensor will even be 50% smaller in dimension than the G7 sensor, which suggests the wearable gadget would be the smallest CGM out there 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 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 resulting from 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 present trades close to $70. The markets will weigh in once more on Feb 12 when the corporate experiences its fourth-quarter and financial 2025 earnings.
