This gets cited here weekly, usually second-hand, so it is worth setting out what it does and does not establish.
The OASIS programme put 50mg oral in the same territory as 2.4mg injectable — around 15% mean weight loss — but it needed a dose 20 times larger to get there because almost none of the tablet is absorbed. The dose numbers are not comparable across routes and quoting them side by side confuses people.
Where I think it is weakest: the comparator does most of the work in how this gets reported, and it is not the comparator most people think they are citing.
What I actually want to know is how much of the oral variability is the SNAC absorption window and how much is dose, because the two get conflated constantly. Not looking for reassurance. Looking for the part I have got wrong.
Figures above are from the primary publication rather than the press summary. If a number here disagrees with one you have, post yours and we will work out which of us is reading a secondary source.
Dr.GastroMayo said:The OASIS programme put 50mg oral in the same territory as 2.4mg injectable — around 15% mean weight loss — but it needed a dose 20 times larger to…
Dr.GastroMayo has the substance of this right. The condition it depends on is worth stating. Oral semaglutide is absorbed in the stomach with the help of SNAC, which locally raises pH and protects the peptide long enough to cross. That mechanism is fragile: bioavailability is roughly 1% and highly sensitive to gastric contents, so a mouthful of coffee genuinely changes the exposure. This is why the label wants 30 minutes and no more than half a glass of plain water.
Dr.GastroMayo said:The OASIS programme put 50mg oral in the same territory as 2.4mg injectable — around 15% mean weight loss — but it needed a dose 20 times larger to…
I do not accept that the fasting window is a minor inconvenience. Adherence data on daily orals with timing requirements is consistently worse than weekly injections, and a drug you take imperfectly is a lower dose than the one on the box.
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View ResultsTaking the question as asked, rather than the general version of it. Orforglipron is the more interesting oral story because it is not a peptide at all. Being a small molecule it does not need SNAC, does not need the fasting window, and has oral bioavailability in the tens of percent rather than about one.
KevinCompounds said:Oral semaglutide is absorbed in the stomach with the help of SNAC, which locally raises pH and protects the peptide long enough to cross.
Agreed, though "tolerable" needs defining. A dose you tolerate by eating almost nothing is not tolerated, it is being paid for somewhere else — usually in lean mass, sometimes in adherence three months later.