Dan Skovronsky knows what makes a good obesity drug.
As chief scientific officer at Eli Lilly, he’s already done it once with the company’s weekly shot, Zepbound. He’s trying to do it again with a more convenient daily pill, then repeat the feat with a shot that could be even more powerful than Zepbound. And that’s not counting the other nine obesity drugs Lilly’s testing in clinical trials.
Skovronsky said the race to create the next great drug is not just about weight loss anymore, something more investors and analysts are starting to say.
Take Amgen‘s experimental drug MariTide: people lost up to 20% of their body weight in a phase two study and Amgen shares fell about 5% on the day the results were released in November. Why? Investors worried that it wouldn’t be enough to compete with Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, both of which will have a yearslong head start.Â
An Eli Lilly & Co. Zepbound injection pen arranged in…