By Josh Nathan-Kazis
Pfizer on Tuesday joined the cavalcade of big pharma firms hunting for novel weight loss drugs in the laboratories of Chinese biotechs, even as U.S. authorities ramp up efforts to undercut the growing Chinese biotech sector.
Pfizer said it had agreed to pay $150 million up front to a subsidiary of a large Chinese biopharma company called Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Co. for the rights to an oral GLP-1 drug currently in early-stage human trials. The Fosun subsidiary, called Yao Pharma, could receive milestone payments worth up to $1.9 billion plus potential royalties as the program progresses.
The licensing deal is an early-stage bet on the expanding demand for weight loss drugs. Pfizer is set to miss out on the first few waves of the new weight loss market after its own internal program crashed and burned early this year. Last month, it made a big bet on the later-stage weight loss drugs under development by the biotech Metsera, which Pfizer bought for $7 billion up front, plus billions more in potential milestone payments.
Now, to help round out its pipeline, Pfizer is looking to China, following the path trod by many of its peers in recent months. While the Metsera drugs closest to coming to market are injectables, the Yao drug Pfizer has now licensed could allow it to offer an oral option over the longer term.
The Chinese biotech sector has exploded in productivity in recent years, sending global big pharma companies rushing to the country to license promising new medicines. Many of the drugs thus far have been so-called "me too" assets, novel compounds that mimic proven medicines, targeting the same biological mechanisms.
That's set off worries in Washington, both for the health of the U.S. biotech sector, which relies on big pharma investment, and for the broader national security.
Earlier this week, congressional leaders unveiled a new version of the National Defense Authorization Act, likely to pass in the coming days, that includes provisions from the BIOSECURE Act, a long-debated measure that will, in this latest form, bar federal contractors and grantees from using services or equipment from certain Chinese biotechs.
The implications of the measure could be far-reaching, and appear designed to weaken the Chinese biotech sector at large. "We view this as an acceleration of policies looking to decouple U.S.-China biotech," Raymond James healthcare policy analyst Chris Meekins wrote this week.
The legislation has the most immediate impact for companies like WuXi AppTec and WuXi Biologics, which were specifically named in prior versions of the bill, and which provide manufacturing and development services for a long list of American drugmakers. It isn't yet clear how that might impact dealmaking between big pharma and Chinese biotechs over the long term.
Those licensing deals have been particularly hot and heavy in the weight loss market: Merck licensed an oral GLP-1 from Hansoh Pharma for $112 million up front in December of 2024, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals licensed a GLP-1/GIP from the same company in July for $80 million up front. AstraZeneca licensed an oral GLP-1 from the Chinese biotech Eccogene for $185 million up front in November 2023, and Novo Nordisk in March of this year licensed a GLP-1/GIP/glucagon drug from the Chinese biotech United Laboratories for $200 million up front.
The most closely watched of the Chinese weight loss drug deals is the agreement between Hengrui Pharma and the U.S.-based Kailera Therapeutics, a private biotech launched in October 2024 to develop a handful of weight loss assets licensed from Hengrui. A Hengrui-run study returned very promising results for one of the drugs in July.
Now, the Pfizer deal adds to the list of recent weight loss drug licensing agreements. Yao Pharma is currently running a Phase 1 trial in Australia of the GLP-1 that Pfizer has licensed. Yao will complete the trial, and Pfizer said it would test the drug in combination with other medicines already in its pipeline.
Pfizer didn't offer details in its press release, but Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger wrote early Tuesday that the Yao drug's "chemical scaffold is similar orforglipron," the GLP-1 pill that Eli Lilly is preparing to launch next year.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com
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December 09, 2025 11:50 ET (16:50 GMT)
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