Good old pills vie for share of weight-loss drug market

The commercial success of the injectable peptide-based weight-loss drugs marketed by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly and Company made one thing clear for Xiayang Qiu, a structural chemist and biotechnology company CEO: “It was too late for rival pharmaceutical companies to enter the weight-loss peptides business,” he says. But to Qiu, being late to the peptide game doesn’t mean one can’t play in the weight-loss drug market at all. After all, the appetite for the medicines is enormous. A J.P. Morgan report estimates that the global market for glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) drugs could surpass $100 billion by 2030. By then, close to 9% of the US population could be on GLP-1 drugs, the report says. Qiu says peptides alone cannot meet that demand. “These days, peptides are fashionable, but small molecules are the proven tradition for treating chronic diseases,” he says. Both small biotech companies, like Qiu’s Regor Therapeutics,