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115年
英文
第 36 題
📖 題組：
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Novo Nordisk’s oral version of Wegovy, making it the first of the popular GLP-1 medications to get the green light as a pill for weight loss. People who want to lose weight and are prescribed Wegovy now have the option of taking a tablet daily vs. or injecting themselves with the drug once a week. They’re expected to lose about the same amount of weight with either version: 16% to 17% of their starting body weight. The plant, just outside of Raleigh, is running around the clock to produce bottles of pills in four different doses, which have been available at retail stores and online pharmacies since the first week of January. “Obesity has become a consumer-oriented disease,” Novo Nordisk’s CEO Mike Doustdar tells TIME. “We’re embracing that.” The Wegovy pill starts with a fungus; specifically, the same yeast used to make bread, called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. But instead of fermenting sugars or grains to make bread rise, the yeast cells are genetically engineered at Novo Nordisk’s facility in Clayton, N.C., to produce a protein that undergoes fermentation in several four-story-tall tanks, then multiple purification steps over about a month to produce semaglutide. This compound mimics a human hormone that regulates appetite by working in the reward center of the brain. It can help people feel full and reduce feelings of hunger. After the fermentation and purification process, semaglutide forms a beige paste resembling pancake batter. In one of the few manual steps in the largely automated production, technicians scrape the paste from large funnels and freeze it at -20°C, where it keeps for up to five years. In the final step, the paste is thawed and further purified into a liquid at a high temperature, which is then spray-dried into a fine white powder—similar to the way snowmaking machines turn hot water into snow. That powder is then pressed into Wegovy tablets. While this semaglutide pill is the first to treat obesity, it isn’t the first that Novo Nordisk has made. Its initial semaglutide pill, Rybelsus, was approved in 2019 to treat diabetes, as an alternative to the company’s Ozempic, which patients must inject weekly. Turning Ozempic into an oral pill required finding a way to protect the drug from the hostile environment of the stomach just long enough for it to be absorbed by the body. Still, the pill is generally not as effective as Ozempic. When diabetes patients noticed they were losing weight on semaglutide, Novo Nordisk and other companies began to study the compound and related ones for their potential effects on obesity. In 2021, the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy to treat obesity, and developing the Wegovy pill became the next challenge. This time, the researchers created a proprietary fatty-acid derivative to better navigate the difficult environment of the stomach. Once the tablet reaches the stomach, it creates temporary changes in the permeability of part of the stomach lining that stops enzymes from breaking down the drug, while giving semaglutide enough time to be absorbed. To maximize the pill’s effectiveness, people should take it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach with up to half a glass of water with no other drinks, food, or other medications for at least 30 minutes, so nothing will interfere with the pill’s activity. The Wegovy pill has an early advantage in hitting pharmacies first, but competitor Eli Lilly, which makes Zepbound, is waiting for an FDA decision about its weight-loss pill orforglipron. Both companies are eager to introduce their oral versions of weight-loss drugs since pills are generally less expensive to produce (and more appealing) than injections, and that should make them more affordable.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Novo Nordisk’s oral version of Wegovy, making it the first of the popular GLP-1 medications to get the green light as a pill for weight loss. People who want to lose weight and are prescribed Wegovy now have the option of taking a tablet daily vs. or injecting themselves with the drug once a week. They’re expected to lose about the same amount of weight with either version: 16% to 17% of their starting body weight. The plant, just outside of Raleigh, is running around the clock to produce bottles of pills in four different doses, which have been available at retail stores and online pharmacies since the first week of January. “Obesity has become a consumer-oriented disease,” Novo Nordisk’s CEO Mike Doustdar tells TIME. “We’re embracing that.” The Wegovy pill starts with a fungus; specifically, the same yeast used to make bread, called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. But instead of fermenting sugars or grains to make bread rise, the yeast cells are genetically engineered at Novo Nordisk’s facility in Clayton, N.C., to produce a protein that undergoes fermentation in several four-story-tall tanks, then multiple purification steps over about a month to produce semaglutide. This compound mimics a human hormone that regulates appetite by working in the reward center of the brain. It can help people feel full and reduce feelings of hunger. After the fermentation and purification process, semaglutide forms a beige paste resembling pancake batter. In one of the few manual steps in the largely automated production, technicians scrape the paste from large funnels and freeze it at -20°C, where it keeps for up to five years. In the final step, the paste is thawed and further purified into a liquid at a high temperature, which is then spray-dried into a fine white powder—similar to the way snowmaking machines turn hot water into snow. That powder is then pressed into Wegovy tablets. While this semaglutide pill is the first to treat obesity, it isn’t the first that Novo Nordisk has made. Its initial semaglutide pill, Rybelsus, was approved in 2019 to treat diabetes, as an alternative to the company’s Ozempic, which patients must inject weekly. Turning Ozempic into an oral pill required finding a way to protect the drug from the hostile environment of the stomach just long enough for it to be absorbed by the body. Still, the pill is generally not as effective as Ozempic. When diabetes patients noticed they were losing weight on semaglutide, Novo Nordisk and other companies began to study the compound and related ones for their potential effects on obesity. In 2021, the FDA approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy to treat obesity, and developing the Wegovy pill became the next challenge. This time, the researchers created a proprietary fatty-acid derivative to better navigate the difficult environment of the stomach. Once the tablet reaches the stomach, it creates temporary changes in the permeability of part of the stomach lining that stops enzymes from breaking down the drug, while giving semaglutide enough time to be absorbed. To maximize the pill’s effectiveness, people should take it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach with up to half a glass of water with no other drinks, food, or other medications for at least 30 minutes, so nothing will interfere with the pill’s activity. The Wegovy pill has an early advantage in hitting pharmacies first, but competitor Eli Lilly, which makes Zepbound, is waiting for an FDA decision about its weight-loss pill orforglipron. Both companies are eager to introduce their oral versions of weight-loss drugs since pills are generally less expensive to produce (and more appealing) than injections, and that should make them more affordable.
What is this passage mainly about?
- A To argue that oral GLP-1 medications are clinically superior to injectable formulations
- B To discuss the production of the first FDA-approved oral obesity drug
- C To critique the pharmaceutical industry’s commodification of obesity
- D To compare efficiencies between fungal fermentation and synthetic drug production
思路引導 VIP
請觀察文章的結構：第一段提到了 FDA 的重要決定，而接下來有三、四段都在詳細描述從「酵母菌」轉化為「錠劑」的具體流程。如果我們要為這篇報導寫一個概括性的標題，這個標題必須同時包含這項「新產品的身份」以及文章中佔比最大的「製造細節」，你會如何統整這兩個元素呢？
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AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
文章核心與製程概述
太棒了！你能精準掌握長篇文章的主旨，代表你具備優秀的資訊整合能力。這篇文章的主軸確實圍繞在美國食品藥物管理局（FDA）首度核准的口服減重藥物——Wegovy 口服錠。文中不僅提到核准的背景與重要性，更用了極大的篇幅詳盡描述其生產製程：從利用基因改造酵母菌（Saccharomyces cerevisiae）進行發酵、純化，到最後將粉末壓製成錠劑的自動化工序。你選擇 (B) 選項，精確地對應了文中對「首款口服藥物」及其「生產過程」的雙重描述。
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