Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on December 11, 2025
By Maggie Fick
LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Zealand Pharma plans to launch five obesity and related drugs by 2030 as the Danish company tries to break into the lucrative weight-loss market with medicines it says could offer fewer and less severe side effects than top-sellers Wegovy and Zepbound.
CEO Adam Steensberg said existing GLP‑1 weight‑loss drugs were only a first step in tackling what he called a "civilisation‑scale health crisis" in a world with one billion obese people. He told Reuters patients needed treatments they could stay on for years rather than months.
Zealand in March agreed a $5.3 billion partnership with Roche to develop and commercialise its lead experimental obesity drug, petrelintide.
The company, whose shares are down 28% so far this year, is presenting its strategy targeting five obesity and metabolic drug launches by 2030 at a capital markets day in London on Thursday.
BOOMING WEIGHT-LOSS DRUG MARKET
The booming market for weight-loss drugs, which analysts estimate could be worth $150 billion annually by the end of the decade, is currently dominated by drugs that mimic the gut hormone GLP-1, including Eli Lilly's Zepbound and Danish rival Novo Nordisk's Wegovy.
Zealand's drug candidate petrelintide, which targets the pancreatic hormone amylin, has shown fewer and less severe gastrointestinal side effects in early trials than Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Eli Lilly's Zepbound.
"The holy grail is not just weight loss, it's pleasant long‑term weight maintenance," Steensberg said, citing real-world data showing more than half of people who stop taking GLP‑1 drugs within a year and regain weight when they stop.
Steensberg said many people taking GLP‑1 drugs report that they "shy away from food" and no longer enjoy a glass of red wine.
ZEALAND AIMS FOR A "FIRST-CHOICE MEDICINE"
"With amylin we believe we have a different category: you still turn up hungry but feel full on a smaller portion. It's a completely different experience. We think it will keep people on therapy and unlock the real health benefits."
Mid-stage trial data for petrelintide is expected in the first quarter of 2026. An early-stage study published last year showed that a high dose of the drug cut weight by an average of 8.6% after 16 weekly doses.
Zealand aims to make petrelintide a "foundational first‑choice medicine" for people wanting to lose weight and keep it off, Steensberg said.
The company said it will open a Boston research site combining its peptide drug expertise with AI‑driven discovery tools. The site will advance an oral small‑molecule platform that Zealand will develop with Chinese biotech firm OTR Therapeutics to enable new drug discovery, in a partnership announced on Thursday.
Competition is fierce in the weight-loss drugs arena, with Zealand not the only company racing to launch new weight loss drugs, while Novo and Lilly may be facing generic competition in the U.S. within five years.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick in London; Additional reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo, editing by Essi Lehto, Thomas Derpinghaus and Jane Merriman)
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