Italy's Biggest GLP-1 Bet Came From a Company You've Never Heard Of

If it works as hoped, bofanglutide could become the world's first biweekly GLP-1 receptor agonist to reach the market. That's a headline Menarini can sell to patients and payers alike.

Gan & Lee's Quiet Climb

Gan & Lee isn't some garage-stage startup. The Chinese company has been steadily building a GLP-1 pipeline centered on bofanglutide (also known as GZR18), and the clinical data is getting interesting.

The program is already in Phase 3 in China for obesity, with a once-monthly formulation also entering Phase 3 trials in late 2025. In the U.S., Gan & Lee completed enrollment for a head-to-head Phase 2 trial against tirzepatide (the active ingredient in Mounjaro) in the first half of 2025, with results expected in the first half of 2026. They've also started a Phase 3 trial in adults with obesity and moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea.

In other words, this isn't a molecule sitting on a whiteboard. It's being tested against the reigning champ, across multiple indications, on two continents.

Under the deal, Menarini handles all regulatory submissions and commercialization across those 39 European markets. Gan & Lee keeps its China rights and pockets the upfront cash plus milestones. It's the kind of arrangement that lets both sides play to their strengths: Gan & Lee develops the drug, Menarini opens doors in Brussels and Berlin.

The Bigger Pattern: China Becomes Pharma's R&D Department

This deal didn't happen in a vacuum. It's part of a massive wave of Western pharma companies licensing GLP-1 assets from Chinese biotechs.

The numbers are staggering. AstraZeneca struck a deal with CSPC worth up to $18.5 billion across a broader obesity and diabetes portfolio. Novo Nordisk partnered with United Laboratories for up to $2.0 billion. Merck locked in a deal with Hansoh at a similar ceiling. Pfizer went after Yao Pharma's assets in a package worth up to $2.1 billion.

The logic is simple: Chinese biotechs can develop GLP-1 candidates faster and cheaper, often reaching clinical proof-of-concept before Western companies even finish lead optimization. For pharma giants (and ambitious mid-tier players like Menarini), licensing is a way to buy into the obesity gold rush without spending a decade and billions on internal discovery.

Many of these deals follow the same template. The Chinese company keeps Greater China rights; the Western partner takes everywhere else. The assets are often early stage, sometimes even preclinical, which tells you how desperate some companies are to plant a flag in obesity before the market consolidates entirely.

Can Menarini Actually Pull This Off?

This is the $771 million question. Menarini operates in 140 countries and employs about 17,800 people. Its core strengths are in cardiology, oncology, and gastroenterology, with a meaningful diagnostics business that already covers diabetes. But it has never been known as an obesity company.

Competing against Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in Europe is like opening a burger joint across the street from In-N-Out and Five Guys simultaneously. You're not going to out-market them. You're not going to out-manufacture them (at least not initially).

But Menarini doesn't need to win the whole market. It needs a niche, and a biweekly GLP-1 with competitive efficacy data could carve one out. European healthcare systems tend to be price-sensitive and open to formulary alternatives, especially when there's a clear patient-convenience argument. If bofanglutide's Phase 3 data holds up, Menarini could position itself as the value-conscious, lower-hassle option for payers tired of Novo Nordisk's pricing power.

The risk, of course, is timing. The European GLP-1 market is expected to shift heavily toward oral formulations around 2027, which could undercut the appeal of any injectable, even a biweekly one. Menarini is essentially betting that the injection window stays open long enough for bofanglutide to build a franchise before pills take over.

The Bottom Line

Menarini's deal with Gan & Lee is a fascinating case study in how the obesity drug race is reshaping pharma's pecking order. Five years ago, a private Italian company licensing a Chinese GLP-1 for 39 European markets would have sounded like science fiction. Now it's just Tuesday in biotech.

The deal won't rattle Novo Nordisk's board. It won't keep Eli Lilly up at night. But it signals something important: the GLP-1 opportunity is so massive that even companies outside the traditional top tier are willing to write nine-figure checks just to get a seat at the table. And increasingly, the ticket to that table is being printed in Beijing and Shanghai.

Whether Menarini's bet pays off depends on Phase 3 data, regulatory timing, and whether European payers bite on the biweekly story. That's a lot of ifs. But in a market this hungry, sometimes showing up with something different is enough to matter.

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