(Bloomberg) — Pfizer Inc. has begun revealing its ambitions in the obesity market, releasing new data on an experimental weight-loss shot and detailing a strategy for gaining a leadership position in the competitive market dominated by companies with first-mover advantages.
After early failures hurt the company’s obesity prospects, Pfizer created a new approach driven by its $10 billion acquisition of Metsera Inc. last year. But the company’s ambitions go far beyond a single drug, with executives envisioning a pipeline of treatments targeting obesity and its many related conditions — for decades.
“We are entering a new era of innovation in internal medicine,” said Chris Boshoff, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, in an interview before the American Diabetes Association meeting in New Orleans.
Study abroad
Upgrade your career!
The company is using the conference to present new data on berobenatide, the long-acting GLP-1 acquired from Metsera. In the results presented on Saturday, patients who received the highest weekly dose lost 15.9% of their body weight after eight months, with no signs of stabilization. Data from a separate study suggested strong improvements in blood sugar levels in patients with diabetes and low treatment dropout rates.
Pfizer highlighted the drug’s potential to become the first in its category administered once a month. A separate analysis in overweight or obese patients without diabetes found that those who received the highest dose every four weeks lost almost 15% of their body weight after 14 months. Success with less frequent applications could give it an edge over rivals like Zepbound and Wegovy, both best-sellers administered weekly.
In February, Pfizer disappointed investors with an earlier evaluation showing the drug produced about 12.3% weight loss after 28 weeks when administered monthly.
Continues after advertising
The New York-based pharmaceutical company is now racing to take the drug to the final stage of testing. Some advanced studies have already begun and Pfizer plans to launch several more. According to Boshoff, the company also intends to focus on other conditions strongly associated with obesity, including sleep apnea and knee osteoarthritis. He will also conduct large studies outside the US, including in China and Japan.
Huge opportunity
Obesity has become the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest commercial opportunity in decades, transforming the trajectory of market leaders Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S. Pfizer is betting that its scale, commercial knowledge and track record in launching extremely popular drugs, such as Viagra and Lipitor, will help the company catch up to the two industry giants and capture a relevant share of the obesity market.
While Covid vaccines and treatments have provided an extraordinary — but temporary — boost to Pfizer’s sales, reduced demand has left the company scrambling to fill the gap. Executives are betting that obesity will be a longer-lasting market than the pandemic, generating a steady stream of revenue for decades.
Boshoff sees berobenatide as the first step in a broader portfolio in metabolic health that will eventually include pills, combination therapies and possibly even new classes of treatment. The company is also developing even longer-acting therapies that could make applications more convenient, including early data on another experimental compound that leads Boshoff to believe it could be administered every three months.
Pfizer is not alone; many pharmaceutical companies follow similar pipeline strategies. Amgen Inc., for example, is in advanced studies with an injection that could be given monthly — or possibly even less frequently. However, Amgen’s drug MariTide was linked to high rates of vomiting in early studies. The company is testing a lower starting dose in hopes of offering a more tolerable option for patients.
Lilly and Novo already sell weight loss pills, which became extremely popular as soon as they were released. Several other companies, including AstraZeneca Plc and Structure Therapeutics Inc., are working on their own versions. Pfizer is turning to a unit of China’s Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co., called YaoPharma, to help it develop a pill after its internal efforts were unsuccessful.
Continues after advertising
The company also expects scientists coming from Metsera — and new obesity hires — to help revitalize its internal research and development efforts.
“We were fortunate to bring a lot of this talent from Metsera, both in discovery and development,” said Boshoff. “That in itself was a huge boost to what we already had in a very mature research and development organization.”
Looking ahead
With highly effective obesity treatments like Novo’s Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound already on the market, doctors say the next generation of drugs will need to be significantly better in terms of side effects, convenience or treatment of associated conditions. Pfizer is conducting 10 large pivotal studies in obesity and related conditions for berobenatide alone in 2026, which is no simple task. And that’s less than half of the company’s broader obesity program. Even if everything goes well, it will still be several years before the medicine reaches patients.
Continues after advertising
Pfizer executives argue that winning in the obesity market will require more than a successful drug. Success, they say, will depend on the ability to act quickly, manufacture drugs on a massive scale and convince patients, doctors and insurers to adopt them.
Jim List, chief of internal medicine, said Pfizer’s commercial infrastructure is a huge advantage as obesity treatment increasingly moves into primary care. List, hired by Pfizer last year to revitalize the unit, described obesity as a natural fit for a company whose biggest successes, including cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor and blood thinner Eliquis, were built around large physician networks and broad patient populations.
“Primary care is in our DNA,” List said.
Continues after advertising
Boshoff said the company is also using a deal with China’s Hangzhou Sciwind Bioscience Co. as a test of sorts for its business structure, allowing it to gain insights into the successful launch of an obesity drug in a large market and develop direct-to-consumer strategies before its products reach patients in the U.S.
While Lilly and Novo initially struggled to produce enough drugs to meet demand, Pfizer already has much of the infrastructure needed to manufacture obesity drugs on a global scale, Boshoff said, including eight sterile injectables facilities around the world. The company also transferred the production of Metsera medicines internally, previously carried out by a third-party manufacturer. “We are internalizing everything, because we can,” he said.
Berobenatide requires a much smaller amount of active ingredient than its competitors, which may make it easier and cheaper to produce, according to Boshoff. “We can manufacture these therapies at the scale needed — and at a scale that very few other companies can.”
Continues after advertising
Pfizer’s strategy also reflects a growing belief among drugmakers that obesity could become a highly individualized field of medicine in the future. Today, patients largely receive the same class of medications, but Boshoff predicts that future treatments will be personalized based on preferences, genetics, biomarkers and specific complications, in the same way that oncology has evolved over the past two decades.
“All illnesses have become more individualized,” Boshoff said. “This will certainly also happen with metabolic diseases, including obesity.”
© 2026 Bloomberg L.P.
