Semaglutide (Novo Nordisk)

Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk has confirmed the theft of six batches of its products—including insulin brands Ryzodeg and Fiasp, and weight-loss drug Wegovy—during transit from its Bhiwandi hub to several Indian cities. The missing items include three batches each of insulin and Wegovy (0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg). The incident has triggered a police investigation and a high-level safety alert. India’s central drug regulator, CDSCO, has raised alarms over the risks, as these rDNA injectables demand strict cold-chain storage to ensure safety and effectiveness. Improper handling could seriously endanger patients. State drug controllers are now under orders to intensify market surveillance and take action under drug laws. Healthcare professionals are being urged to advise patients to purchase only from verified sources and to report any health issues promptly. Novo Nordisk, which launched Wegovy in India in June, stressed that patient safety remains its highest priority and pledged full cooperation with authorities.

Investors are souring on the obesity drug field, which was once heralded as the biggest pharmaceutical market of all time. Even as Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy continue to rake in billions of dollars each quarter, there has been a string of recent clinical misses for the next generation of obesity drugs, and that’s prompted some soul-searching among investors. Novo’s CagriSema , Lilly’s oral orforglipron , and most recently, Viking Therapeutics’ candidate have reported results that disappointed investors, who reacted quickly and sharply . Their stock prices are all down drastically since the beginning of 2025, with Novo $NVO and Viking $VKTX down about 35% and Lilly $LLY down about 8%. It’s no surprise, then, that some are moving on from the obesity drug craze of the past few years, according to BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman. Investors are questioning what’s next and how oral medicines fit into the market, he said. “Public investor opinion is evident from market caps,” Stifel banker Tim Opler said in an email. But public investor interest “doesn’t seem to be waning.” The initial success of GLP-1s made Novo the most valuable European company at one point and catapulted Eli Lilly’s market cap close to becoming the first $1 trillion pharmaceutical company. The GLP-1 mechanism has taken the industry by storm, with some projecting the market could be as big as $150 billion by 2035 , and follow-on competitors have appeared in droves. Stifel is tracking 157 obesity assets currently in clinical development. There have been dozens of high-dollar licensing deals in the past two years in a field that was ghosted by nearly every large pharma company. Yet concerns persist. “We are not optimistic about the prospects for many pipeline projects in today’s emerging obesity market,” Stifel bankers wrote in a July report . “This is because (1) Lilly has a dominant portfolio and (2) semaglutide, a very good drug, will be generic in roughly five years. But the good news is that many opportunities remain to upend the market with new approaches.” Meanwhile, private funding for obesity drug developers has plateaued. There were two high-profile launches early this year: Verdiva Bio’s $411 million debut and Versant’s Helicore Biopharma breaking cover with $65 million . But there was only one private fundraise in the second quarter, signifying a “lull in obesity financings,” according to Oppenheimer bankers. It was a $33 million round that went to a Bob Langer-affiliated startup called Syntis Bio . There are “so many bets on the table right now,” Opler said, and so the bar is “really high” for new entrants. His team said obesity biotechs brought in $979 million in venture funding last year, up from $638 million in 2021, the year that Wegovy was first approved. Third Rock Ventures is intrigued by the space, according to partner Jeffrey Tong, and it has supported companies like Septerna that have gone on to add obesity drugs to their pipelines and forge partnerships with obesity leaders like Novo. But the biotech incubator has yet to form an obesity-focused startup. “As we think about company creation, we have to ask ourselves the question, ‘What does the world need five years, 10 years from now?’” Tong said in an interview. If Third Rock were to build an obesity biotech, it would have to offer a clear improvement on Zepbound and Wegovy. This means medicines that are not only effective, but also tolerable, convenient, “compatible with everyday life” and chronic care, muscle-sparing and broadly scalable, Tong said. Deep Apple Therapeutics CEO Spiros Liras also believes that durability and tolerability are key focal points of next-gen medicines. “The differentiation between 23% and 21% [weight loss], for me, is meaningless at this point of time,” Liras said Thursday. Deep Apple is working on various drugs for obesity, including an MC4R agonist. At least one of its obesity assets is slated to enter the clinic next year, he said. Some companies like Omega Funds-backed Ousia Pharma are still investing in obesity but keeping quiet about their plans. “We’re being quite timid or discreet, if you will, just because we want to wrap up some pretty interesting new experiments of which we’ve already seen very good data before we disclose IP and all that,” Omega founder Otello Stampacchia said last month . “People can leapfrog quite quickly, particularly with small molecules and so on.”