Roche Just Crashed the Obesity Party With a Number Nobody Expected

How It Stacks Up Against the Big Two

Let's put the scoreboard up, keeping in mind these are cross-trial comparisons (different patients, different conditions, different timeframes).

Wegovy (semaglutide, Novo Nordisk) delivered about 13.7% to 15% weight loss in its pivotal obesity trials over 68 to 72 weeks. In a direct head-to-head trial called SURMOUNT-5, Zepbound beat Wegovy by a wide margin: 20.2% versus 13.7% at 72 weeks.

Zepbound (tirzepatide, Eli Lilly) has shown up to roughly 22.5% weight loss at its highest doses in earlier trials over about 72 weeks. Those are considered best-in-class results.

Enicepatide's 22.5% at 48 weeks is therefore right in Zepbound's neighborhood, and it got there faster. That's a significant signal, even with all the caveats about comparing different trials. It clearly outpaces Wegovy and looks competitive with (or possibly better than) Zepbound on a time-adjusted basis.

Wall Street's Verdict: Impressed, but Cautious

Analysts are taking notice, but nobody's handing Roche the crown just yet. RBC analyst Trung Huynh noted that Roche's drug and other rivals' candidates are "comparable to currently marketed treatments" on weight loss and side effects, but said they "cannot match Lilly's next-generation products" like retatrutide, a triple agonist showing up to 28.7% weight loss in its Phase 3 trials.

That's the fundamental tension. Roche isn't just racing against today's drugs; it's racing against tomorrow's. Lilly has orforglipron, an oral GLP-1 pill that received FDA approval in 2026. It also has retatrutide, which hits three receptors instead of two. Novo Nordisk is pushing CagriSema, a GLP-1 plus amylin combination that's already been filed with the FDA.

The obesity drug market could exceed $100 billion annually within the next decade. But being third or fourth to market with a competitive-but-not-superior drug is a very different business than being first. Roche knows this, which is why it isn't betting on enicepatide alone.

Roche's Bigger Playbook

Roche has assembled what it calls a five-asset obesity franchise, and it's building the whole ecosystem at once.

Beyond enicepatide, there's CT-996, an oral GLP-1 candidate also from the Carmot acquisition. There's petrelintide, a long-acting amylin analog licensed from Zealand Pharma in a deal worth up to $5.3 billion. And there's emugrobart, a drug developed by Chugai Pharmaceutical in collaboration with Roche, designed to preserve lean muscle mass during weight loss, which addresses one of the biggest complaints about current GLP-1 therapies: patients lose muscle along with fat.

The strategy is combinations. Roche plans to use enicepatide as the "backbone" and layer other drugs on top. A combination trial pairing enicepatide with petrelintide is expected to begin in 2026. The idea is that amylin works through a completely different mechanism, potentially boosting weight loss while reducing the nausea that plagues current GLP-1 drugs.

Roche has also poured about $700 million into a new manufacturing facility in North Carolina, specifically for injectable obesity drugs. That's a clear signal: this isn't a science experiment anymore. They're building for commercial scale.

The Race That's Just Getting Started

Phase 3 trials for enicepatide are slated to begin in the first half of 2026. The company has publicly stated its goal of becoming a top-three obesity company before 2030.

That's ambitious for a company that, until 2024, didn't even have an obesity drug in its pipeline. But the 22.5% number changes the math. It transforms Roche from a hopeful latecomer into a legitimate contender with Phase 3 data that could make or break its candidacy.

The obesity drug wars are turning into pharma's version of the streaming wars: too many well-funded players chasing the same massive audience, each convinced their content (or in this case, their molecule) is the one that will win. Lilly and Novo built the market. Roche, Amgen, Viking, and Pfizer all want a piece. With over 193 obesity drugs now in development globally, the field is getting absurdly crowded.

But crowded markets still produce winners. And Roche just proved it belongs in the conversation.

Lilly's Next Obesity Drug Might Kill Your CPAP Machine

Eli Lilly's retatrutide slashed sleep apnea severity by 60.6% in a Phase 3 trial, posting numbers that appear to top its own FDA-approved Zepbound. The obesity drug wars just expanded well beyond the bathroom scale.