AI Summary
5 min readThe pharmaceutical industry is buzzing about a new class of drugs that could become "the next Ozempic"—not for weight loss or diabetes, but for the brain. The molecule in question is orexin, a neuropeptide that acts as the body’s master switch between sleep and wakefulness. In early August 2024, the FDA approved a new drug called ovoperexone, made by the Japanese firm Takeda, to treat narcolepsy. But researchers and drugmakers are already exploring whether orexin agonists could treat far more common conditions like depression, ADHD, and addiction. The parallel to GLP-1 drugs, which started as diabetes treatments and became blockbuster therapies for obesity and beyond, is hard to ignore.
The discovery of orexin and its role as the brain's wake-up switch
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:14) **Orexin Agonists: The Next Blockbuster Drug Class?** - Global business writer Shailesh Chitnis introduces a new class of brain peptides that regulate wakefulness, drawing comparisons to the GLP-1 (Ozempic) revolution.
- 2 (04:46) **The Discovery of Orexin: A Dogged Pursuit** - How researchers, including a Stanford scientist studying narcoleptic Dobermans and Labradors, converged on the orexin molecule in the late 1990s.
- 3 (06:01) **Beyond Narcolepsy: The Potential "Everything Drug"** - Early animal trials suggest orexin agonists could regulate reward-seeking behavior, motivation, and other brain functions.
- 4 (07:06) **Market Potential: A $16 Billion Opportunity** - A Morgan Stanley report estimates these medicines could generate nearly $16 billion a year by 2035, dwarfing the current $3 billion narcolepsy market.
- 5 (09:20) **Japan's Startup Problem: A Loss of Post-War Charm** - The episode shifts to Japan's weak startup scene, contrasting the post-war founding of Sony and Honda with the country's current lack of unicorns.
- 6 (10:57) **Problem One: A Shortage of Risk Capital** - Venture capital in Japan is new (barely existed until the mid-2010s) and is distributed unevenly, with a severe lack of late-stage funding for scaling up.
- 7 (11:58) **Problem Two: Low Cultural Standing** - A survey found only 24% of Japanese consider entrepreneurship a desirable occupation, compared to a global average of 67%.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Orexins are peptides involved in the body’s sleep-wake system—and are big pharma’s next big thing. Like multi-purpose GLPs, they may have far more uses than just regulating shuteye. We ask why Japan’s post-war innovation boom petered out, and what must be done to breed more unicorns. And why procrastination seems to be on the rise, and how to beat it.
Guests and host:
- Shailesh Chitnis, global business correspondent
- Ethan Wu, Asia business and finance editor
- Benjamin Sutherland, science writer
- Rosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”
- Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- orexins, peptides, sleep disorders, pharmaceuticals
- Japan, innovation, startups
- procrastination
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