UK becomes first in Europe to approve oral weight-loss drug Foundayo, offering new hope for obesity treatment

The UK has approved Foundayo, the first oral weight-loss treatment in Europe, providing a potential alternative for those avoiding injectable therapies, pending NHS funding approval.

The UK has become the first country in Europe to approve a new oral weight-loss treatment, with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency giving the green light to orforglipron, which will be sold as Foundayo. The tablet is designed for adults with obesity and for some people who are overweight and have at least one weight-related health condition, and it can also be used to help control blood sugar in patients with poorly managed type 2 diabetes.

Julian Beach, the MHRA’s executive director for healthcare quality and access, said the regulator had completed a “rigorous assessment” of the drug’s safety, quality and effectiveness before authorising it. He added that, as with other GLP-1 receptor agonists, Foundayo will be available only on prescription and will remain under close safety monitoring.

The medicine is not yet available on the NHS. Before it can be prescribed routinely in England and Wales, it must be reviewed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which decides whether new treatments offer enough benefit for the health service to fund them. The approval follows the MHRA’s earlier authorisation in June of oral Wegovy, another tablet form in the same broad class of medicines.

Specialists said the decision could widen access to treatment, particularly for people who prefer tablets to injections. Simon Cork, senior lecturer in physiology at Anglia Ruskin University, said the approval was a “big step forward” because it may be offered to people at a lower body weight threshold than some existing medicines and could prove cheaper to manufacture. Naveed Sattar, professor of cardiometabolic medicine and honorary consultant at the University of Glasgow, said the drug adds to choice for patients with obesity, especially those reluctant to use injectable therapies, and noted that it can be taken at any time of day, unlike oral semaglutide, which must be taken fasting.