Vimy Pharma co-founder, CEO and director Dave Suchon, left, and co-founder, president and chair Farris Smith, right, in Toronto on Wednesday.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
As the race among drug makers heats up to deliver a generic form of the blockbuster drug Ozempic next year, Vimy Pharmaceuticals Inc., a new entrant to the field, is aiming to produce a made-in-Canada version.
Toronto-based Vimy Pharma was founded last year by Dave Suchon and Farris Smith, two former executives in Novo Nordisk’s NVO-N Canadian operations. In those roles, they had a front-row seat as the Danish drug maker brought Ozempic to Canada, where it soon became the bestselling drug in the country – earning $2.5-billion in sales at retail pharmacies last year, close to triple the next bestselling drug, according to data collected by IQVIA Canada.
Ozempic and Wegovy – prescribed for diabetes and weight loss, respectively – lose market exclusivity in January, which clears the way for generic formulations of semaglutide, the active ingredient in both.
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Mr. Suchon and Mr. Smith said they started Vimy Pharma to fill what they saw as a gap in domestic production and ownership of pharmaceuticals.
“There’s not a tonne in the way of Big Pharma that is headquartered in Canada,” Mr. Suchon said.
They said they were inspired, in particular, by Canada’s history of pioneering diabetes drugs. Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin in 1921 in the lab of John Macleod, along with Alberta biochemist James Collip. Decades later, Canadian scientist Dan Drucker played an integral role in discovering the GLP-1 gut hormones that were the foundation for the class of drugs that includes Ozempic.
Mr. Suchon said that semaglutide was an obvious candidate to focus on as Vimy’s first product. “When we were forming Vimy, we took a look around at the Canadian market, and semaglutide certainly puts its hand up as crucially important for Canadians,” he said.
“There’s over one million Canadians currently using the product, thereabouts, and when you look at the prevalence of chronic diseases such as obesity, [which] affects about 33 per cent of adult Canadians, you can see that the total number of Canadians who might need this product and could benefit from it is tremendous.”
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They chose the company’s name in honour of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, a seminal conflict in the First World War in which Canadian forces overcame a heavily fortified German position in northern France.
“It’s a very bright spot in Canada’s history,” Mr. Smith said. “So, we wanted to choose a name and also an event that was inspirational for us.”
Vimy Pharma has announced it will donate a portion of all profits to Wounded Warriors Canada, a mental-health-care provider for veterans, first responders and their families.
Mr. Smith, who was born and raised in North Carolina, began working for Novo Nordisk in 2003 and worked in the drug maker’s offices in Saudi Arabia, Brazil and France, before landing in Canada as chief financial officer in 2016. He said he has since become a Canadian citizen.
Mr. Suchon grew up in Toronto and studied biochemistry and law, working as a lawyer and then rising through the ranks of Novo Nordisk Canada to become its vice-president of corporate affairs. He and Mr. Smith both left the company in 2023.
Vimy Pharma’s submission is coming together with the help of other local partners. The company is working with Dalton Pharma Services, a laboratory in Toronto, to create its formulation. It is also working with Vancouver-based Pharmaris Canada Inc. on sales and marketing.
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To make the drug, the company turned to Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation (API), an Edmonton-based non-profit laboratory and manufacturing facility that received $98.1-million in federal and provincial funds starting in 2023 to increase domestic drug production. Vimy Pharma’s generic semaglutide is set to be the facility’s first commercial product.
Andrew MacIsaac, API’s chief executive officer, said it was exciting to work on a drug that was well known and in demand. “Semaglutide’s in the headlines,” he said. “It’s the first new molecule in a class of molecules that have a huge potential to change human health for the better.”
Vimy Pharma says its drug will be available in a vial, which is cheaper to produce and easier to transport than injectable pens – a format that the industry has been moving to in Canada for GLP-1 drugs, particularly Mounjaro from Eli Lilly & Co.
Vimy Pharma’s generic semaglutide will not be available in January, but the founders say their goal is for the product to be out some time in 2026. The company still has to make its submission to Health Canada to be authorized for sale, a process that can take six months.
Health Canada’s public database of generic submissions lists seven companies that have so far applied to produce generic semaglutide. The five submissions with company names – Sandoz Canada Inc., Apotex Inc., Taro Pharmaceuticals Inc., Aspen Pharmacare Canada Inc. and Teva Canada Ltd. – are all foreign-owned companies and not all have manufacturing capacity in Canada. (Apotex was long owned by a Canadian family, who sold it to a U.S. private-equity firm in 2022.) A submission does not mean a company will ultimately produce and sell the drug if it gets approval, although Sandoz and Teva have confirmed to The Globe and Mail they have plans to do so.
The remaining two submissions do not have names attached. However, executives at Indian pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. said in an earnings call on July 23 that the company had made a submission in Canada to sell generic semaglutide and hoped to launch its product in January, which would be made in its Indian facilities. Canadian representatives of Dr. Reddy’s did not provide more information when contacted by The Globe.