Why Lilly's Weight Loss Pill Isn't a Peptide

Novo Nordisk spent decades and $1.8 billion learning how to get a peptide past the gut. Eli Lilly looked at the same problem and decided to skip it entirely. Your gastrointestinal tract is a 30-foot disassembly line for proteins. Acid denatures them, pepsin cleaves them, trypsin finishes the job, and the mucus layer blocks whatever survives. Sean Geiger’s excellent history of oral peptides traces the full arc: the first attempt at oral insulin was in 1922. Over a hundred years and thirteen ...