An injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, is displayed in New York City on Dec. 11, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Eli Lilly is suing four telehealth companies selling compounded versions of the pharmaceutical giant’s weight loss drug Zepbound and its diabetes treatment Mounjaro, the company’s latest attempt to crack down on the booming industry of copycat drugs.
In lawsuits filed Wednesday, Lilly accuses the sites — Mochi Health, Fella Health, Willow Health and Henry Meds — of deceiving consumers about “untested, unapproved drugs” and turning them away from Lilly’s medicines.
Lilly alleges the companies are claiming to offer personalized options when they are actually mass-marketing slightly different versions of Lilly’s drugs in order to skirt FDA rules. Lilly also claims some of the sites are selling formulations of the drugs that haven’t been studied, such as oral tablets and drops.
Fella, Willow and Henry Meds didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment. Mochi Health in a statement said its model “remains compliant with FDA guidance and pharmacy regulations.”
Lilly’s diabetes drug Mounjaro went into short supply in late 2022, allowing pharmacies and outsourcing facilities to produce the treatment, a practice called compounding. Novo Nordisk’s weight loss drug Wegovy was also in short supply, opening up the market for compounding GLP-1s.
That business boomed online, where people sought versions of the treatments if they couldn’t find the brand names or couldn’t get them covered by insurance. Mass compounding of tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound, was supposed to stop last month after the Food and Drug Administration declared the shortage of the drugs over.
Some pharmacies kept doing it anyway, producing versions that differ slightly from the brand name, which could possibly keep them out of the FDA’s crosshairs. Earlier this month, Lilly sued two pharmacies, alleging they falsely marketed their products as personalized versions of the drugs that have been clinically tested and are made using stringent safety standards.
One of the telehealth platforms Lilly is now suing, Mochi Health, planned to continue selling compounded versions of tirzepatide, betting that offering personalized treatments would keep it out of legal trouble, Mochi CEO Myra Ahmad told CNBC in March.
Asked whether she feared legal action from Lilly, Ahmad said she wasn’t worried about her prescribers since “they have established patient-physician relationships” and “the beauty of medicine is really that they get full autonomy to decide what is the best way to manage their patients.”
Lilly in its filing Wednesday claimed Ahmad is not a licensed physician and that Mochi and its “unlicensed owners exercise undue influence and control over, among other things, the prescribing decisions of physicians” and as a result engage in the “unlawful corporate practice of medicine.”
Ahmad in a statement said the use of compounded medications “remains appropriate and legal when tailored to individual patient needs and prescribed by a licensed medical provider” and that Mochi’s physicians choose which treatments are best for their patients. She said she holds a doctor of medicine degree but is not practicing as CEO of Mochi.
Lilly makes a similar allegation against Fella Health, accusing the company of making “sweeping corporate decisions that dictate patient care, such as when Fella changed patients en masse from one tirzepatide formulation to another with additives.”
In all four cases, Lilly is seeking to stop the sites from marketing or selling tirzepatide. But it could take months, or even longer, for the cases to make their way through the courts.
