STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about Novo licensing a Chinese obesity pill, Merck pulling an antibiotic, and more

The Sept. 29, 2026 Pharmalittle column from STAT's Ed Silverman is a roundup of pharmaceutical industry tidbits, leading with Novo Nordisk's effort to strengthen its position in the oral obesity drug market. It also references Merck pulling an antibiotic, but the excerpt does not provide details on that item.

Novo has agreed to pay up to $2.6 billion to license an experimental weekly weight-loss pill from China's Hengrui Pharma. The deal is Novo's second since its investor day last week, when its pledges to boost growth with new drugs fell flat; the company is trying to regain ground lost to rival Eli Lilly in the obesity market. Last week, Novo also agreed to license technology from Nanexa that could allow patients to take one weight-loss injection every few months. Analysts said a weekly pill would be a significant entrant to the market.

Separately, Roche stopped work on an obesity drug candidate after clinical-trial data suggested the medicine did not hit internal targets. Roche returned rights to the drug, emugrobart, to Chugai Pharmaceutical, which Roche largely owns and which originally discovered the drug before licensing it to Roche. Roche had previously estimated emugrobart could reach annual peak sales of between $1.21 billion and $2.41 billion. The company is also developing two obesity injections and a pill, and sees potential for each to exceed $3.6 billion in peak sales.

Together, the items highlight the competitive pressure and pipeline pruning underway in obesity drug development, with Novo paying up for an oral candidate while Roche exits one program and focuses on other assets.