By Bill Alpert
The first effective weight-loss pills should hit the market this year, but expect lots of other news in obesity drugs this year, said a Guggenheim Securities note Sunday.
Pill versions of the successful GLP1 drugs from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly will likely be on the market in 2026's first half. The injection market that has brought in so much sales for those firms will also see study reports on long-acting GLP1s -- dosed monthly instead of weekly -- as well as non-GLP1s from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Zealand Pharma.
The drug industry is diving into obesity drug development, says Guggenheim's Seamus Fernandez, with multibillion-dollar acquisitions and research programs. Over 2,300 clinical trials are recruiting, and the number of final Phase 3 trials has doubled in the past year, to nearly 140.
Lilly leads in research, with 69 studies and 47 of them in Phase 3, as it explores a dozen different physiological targets in our body's weight regulation. Novo is a solid second, in its research breadth, but Fernandez says there is plenty of room for more players.
"[L]arge, untapped markets with multi-blockbuster potential have captured the interest of investors and biopharma alike," he writes.
A key focus will be the imminent launch of Novo's Wegovy pill, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration three weeks ago, and an expected June quarter launch of Lilly's orforglipron pill, assuming FDA approval. Fernandez says investors will watch to see whether Novo or Lilly pill sales are held back by digestion issues.
Other companies will report Phase 2 studies on obesity pill candidates in this year's first half, including one developed by AstraZeneca and the U.S./China start-up Eccogene, and another from Structure Therapeutics.
One way for new entrants to compete with Lilly and Novo will be with long-acting alternatives to today's weekly shots. In September Pfizer acquired Metsera for what could total $10 billion. Key reasons for the purchase were Metsera's experimental monthly versions of a GLP1 drug and the complementary weight-loss molecule known as amylin.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told the J.P. Morgan healthcare conference today that Phase 2 study results on the long-acting GLP1 and amylin drugs will be reported at major scientific conferences, sometime this year.
Doses spaced many months apart may be possible for obesity treatments using a technology called RNA-interference, which block a cell's manufacturing instructions for a problematic protein. Excitement over early trial results for RNA-interference treatments supplied boosts for the stocks of Wave Life Sciences and Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals. Follow-on data from those firms will appear as 2026 goes on.
Guggenheim thinks that GLP1s will remain the workhorses in obesity for the foreseeable future. An alternative class of drugs with potentially milder digestive side effects are the amylins -- with versions being pursued by Novo, Lilly, and the team up of Zealand and Roche Holding.
In December, Novo filed an FDA approval application for a weekly combo shot of its GLP1 Wegovy plus an amylin, called CagriSema. Approval, if it comes, would be later this year.
At December investor conferences, Amgen said it is working through the data from Phase 2 studies of its amylin drug MariTide, and expects to report results early this year. Zealand and Roche will report Phase 2 results on their amylin drug petrelintide in this year's first quarter. This year will also bring data on long-acting amylins from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, as well as on a pill from Structure Therapeutics.
Amylins could unlock a new segment in the obesity market, says Fernandez, for patients who can't tolerate GLP1s.
Write to Bill Alpert at william.alpert@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 12, 2026 16:21 ET (21:21 GMT)
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