Roche targets becoming top 3 obesity player as experimental drug enters late-stage trial

Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche is targeting becoming a top three obesity player globally, posing a potential rival to heavyweights Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly as it advances one of its experimental weight-loss drugs to a late-stage trial.

“I want you to know that I am serious about this goal,” Teresa Graham, CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, told investors and analysts on at Roche’s Pharma Day in London on Monday.

“We know how to break into new markets,” she added.

The drugmaker said earlier this week that its CT-388 weight loss injection was entering a phase III trial — the final stage before a company can seek regulatory approval — marking the latest development in Roche’s nascent but fast-growing pipeline of treatments for obesity and related conditions.

Roche does not currently have any approved obesity drugs on the market, but Graham said the company was aiming for launch across its suite of treatments by 2030.

That includes the closely watched Petrelintide drug candidate, which Roche is currently co-developing and co-commercializing as part of a $5.3 billion partnership with Danish biotech Zealand Pharma.

“I think we’re on track to that,” Manu Chakravarthy, vice president and global head of cardiovascular, renal and metabolism product development, told CNBC of the timeline for Petrelintide.

“We’re very much committed to trying to pull that [timeline] in as much as possible,” he added.

Petrelintide, a nascent form of treatment known as an amylin analog, adds to Roche’s existing GLP-1 offering including CT-388 and once-daily oral candidate CT-996, which were both acquired as part of Roche’s first foray into the obesity market with the purchase in late 2023 of U.S. biotech Carmot Therapeutics.

The company further bolstered its offering last week with a deal to buy U.S. biotech company 89bio, joining competitors in developing new liver disease treatments to complement weight loss drugs.

Graham told investors she was confident that Roche’s growing suite of drug candidates would help bolster its chances of success in the increasingly competitive weight-loss drug market.

Yihan Li, pharma analyst at Barclays, said Roche’s goal of becoming a top three player was “potentially achievable” due to their broad pipeline of obesity assets, but noted that next year would be a “big year” for their trial readouts.

“More importantly, the obesity market is only a duopoly currently. So it will be a question mark how big the gap will be between Roche vs. Novo/LLY,” she wrote in emailed comments, adding that other competitor treatments were likely to come to market ahead of Roche.

It comes as rivals Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have been racing to get their obesity pills to market, as they seek to expand their offering amid booming demand for their GLP-1 treatments. Both companies are also exploring amylin analog candidates as well as other experimental treatments.

Already the pair dominate the obesity drug market, even as competition from copycat compounded pharmacies has grown.

Nevertheless, Graham suggested that newer market entrants could learn important lessons from the first round of obesity treatments. In particular, she said “next-generation” drugs should address unmet needs around tolerability, weight maintenance, treatment of comorbidities and lean muscle loss.

“Our differentiation relies on having that breadth of options,” she said. “We can cover the breadth of this unmet need completely.”

“If you don’t have portfolio of solutions, that’s what makes it limiting,” Chakravarthy added.