MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Novo Nordisk Furious at $49 Knockoff Ozempic Pill Terbaru 2025

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: Novo Nordisk Furious at $49 Knockoff Ozempic Pill Wajib Baca

Novo Nordisk conquered the world with its borderline miraculous drug semaglutide, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy. But with a sinking stock price and compelling alternatives eating its lunch, it’s now finding itself in a position in which it has to take desperate measures to fight off its competitors.

On Thursday, the Danish pharmaceutical giant vowed to take legal action against Hims & Hers after the telehealth company announced a much more affordable knockoff of its weight loss pill, Wegovy— which it’s offering starting at $49 for a month’s supply, though the price subsequently jumps to $99.

“The action by Hims & Hers is illegal mass compounding that poses a significant risk to patient safety,” Novo said in a statement, per CNBC. “Novo Nordisk will take legal and regulatory action to protect patients, our intellectual property and the integrity of the US gold-standard drug approval framework.

“This is another example of Hims & Hers’ historic behavior of duping the American public with knock-off GLP-1 products, and the FDA has previously warned them about their deceptive advertising of GLP-1 knock-offs.”

It remains to be seen if the lawsuit materializes. But Novo probably felt it had to say something to save face. Immediately after Hims announced its Wegovy knockoff on Thursday, the pharma giant’s shares plunged by nearly 8 percent.

Luckily for Novo, they’re now back up by over 5 percent, after its big brother came to the rescue: later that same day, the US Food and Drug Administration made its own vow that it would crack down on “illegal copycat drugs.” With the script now flipped, Hims’ stock nosedived by ten percent in after-hours trading, per Reuters, and as of today, is down by over 2 percent.

What Hims is offering is what’s known as a compounded form of a drug, which are made by pharmacies using their own ingredients, rather than being made by the pharmaceutical company. They’re different from generic versions of a drug, which are approved by the FDA. Compounded drugs are largely unregulated and receive no FDA approval, but are far cheaper than buying the brand name. 

The practice of compounding drugs allows a pharmacist to tailor a drug to a patient’s specific needs, but big pharma companies view it as a loophole that lets copycats sell cheap knockoffs. At one point, Novo claimed that some one million Americans were taking semaglutide knockoffs, and appealed to the US government to ban imports of some of the key ingredients copycats used to formulate their versions of the drug.

The increased competition comes after a disastrous years-long spell for Novo, which was once the most valuable company in Europe. US rival drugmaker Eli Lilly overtook prescription for Wegovy with its Zepbound weight loss shot — which, to rub salt in the wound, also performed better in a head-to-head trial. It didn’t help that Novo’s offerings were prohibitively expensive before it eventually slashed them last summer, at one point costing more than $1,000 per month for customers without insurance. The perception of its weakening grip on the throne saw Novo’s stock collapse by over 50 percent year over year in 2025, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in value.

And its worst days may still be ahead. On Wednesday, Novo said it expected sales to fall this year, the New York Times reported, which would be its first annual decline in sales in nearly a decade. Meanwhile, Eli Lilly said it expected its sales to keep growing, nudging its market cap back above the $1 trillion mark.

Novo’s saving grace is that it beat Lilly to the punch with a pill version of Wegovy, released in January. Pill versions are seen as the next big steep for weight loss drugs, as they’re cheaper and less intimidating than shots. Its CEO Mike Doustdar claimed that the Wegovy pill is selling 15 times faster in its first month that than the injectable version on its debut, per the NYT. But this advantage may soon vanish too, as Lilly expects to release its own pill later this year.

More on weight loss drugs: People Who Go Off GLP-1s Are Experiencing a Sudden and Terrible Hunger

The post Novo Nordisk Furious at $49 Knockoff Ozempic Pill appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: New 3D printing technique lets soft robots bend, twist, and gr

Harvard engineers have developed a new 3D printing technique that allows soft robots to bend, twist, and change shape in predictable ways when inflated.

The approach embeds shape-morphing behavior directly into the printed structure, removing much of the guesswork that has long plagued soft robotics design.

Soft robots, typically made from flexible and biocompatible materials, are increasingly attractive for applications ranging from surgery to industrial handling. But controlling how these machines move has remained difficult.

Traditional fabrication relies on molds, layered casting, and surface-patterned air channels, making customization slow and complex.

The new method replaces those steps with a single 3D printing process that creates long, flexible filaments containing precisely positioned hollow channels.

When air is pumped into these channels, the structure bends in specific, preprogrammed directions.

The work was led by graduate student Jackson Wilt and former postdoctoral researcher Natalie Larson in the lab of Jennifer Lewis at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The team combined several existing printing techniques developed in the Lewis lab into a single fabrication strategy that enables rapid design changes without molds.

The key is a process called rotational multimaterial 3D printing, which uses a single nozzle to print multiple materials at once.

By rotating the nozzle during printing, the researchers can control where different materials are placed inside each filament.

Printing motion into matter

Using this approach, the team printed filaments with a tough polyurethane outer shell and a removable inner core made from a gel-like polymer commonly found in hair products.

By adjusting the nozzle rotation speed, flow rate, and geometry, the researchers controlled the orientation, size, and shape of the inner channel with high precision.

Once the outer shell solidified, the inner gel was washed away, leaving behind hollow channels. These channels act as built-in pneumatic pathways that drive motion when pressurized.

Depending on how the channels are positioned, the filament can bend, twist, or contract in predictable ways.

“We use two materials from a single outlet, which can be rotated to program the direction the robot bends when inflated,” Wilt said.

“Our goals are aligned with creating soft, bio-inspired robots for various applications.”

Unlike conventional soft robotics manufacturing, the method eliminates the need for casting, sealing, and multi-step assembly. Designs can be modified quickly by changing print parameters rather than rebuilding molds.

From flowers to grippers

To demonstrate the technique, the researchers printed a spiral, flower-like actuator in one continuous path that opens and curls when inflated.

They also created a hand-shaped gripper with five digits and defined knuckle joints, showing how complex, articulated motion can be achieved in a single print.

Because the structures are printed from flexible and potentially biocompatible materials, the technology could be useful in areas such as surgical robotics, assistive devices, and human-machine interfaces.

The ability to rapidly customize motion could also benefit soft manufacturing tools designed to handle delicate objects.

Larson, now an assistant professor at Stanford University, and Wilt say the technique offers a new way to think about soft robot design by embedding function directly into printed matter rather than adding it later.

The study was published in Advanced Materials.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com