The most valuable ticket in the weight loss drug market is now shifting from injection to tablet form.
In early April, Eli Lilly's oral weight loss drug Orforglipron was approved for marketing by the US FDA, almost serving as a clear signal to the global market: The competition for GLP-1 is no longer just a clash between injectables, but has officially entered the oral era. For Eli Lilly, this is not just about selling one more drug; for the entire industry, it means that the gate for the next round of market expansion might have truly been opened.
Over the past few years, the popularity of GLP-1 weight loss drugs has largely been due to the fact that it proved one thing: Obesity treatment can be made into a super market. But no matter how successful the injectables are, there are always boundaries such as usage habits, compliance, supply capacity, and ramp-up efficiency. Whoever brings oral products onto the commercial stage first will have a better chance of turning a weight loss drug from a "star drug" into a "mass-market treatment option".
The reason why Eli Lilly's move has attracted high attention from the market is precisely because it has hit not just a single product opportunity, but a generational transition point.
What Eli Lilly has grabbed is not just a new drug approval
Based on public information, Eli Lilly has laid out a rather complete clinical layout for Orforglipron. The company has currently advanced 7 phase III studies targeting obesity and type 2 diabetes, with a cumulative global enrollment of over 10,000 patients, among which Chinese patients participated in 6 global multicenter trials. The ATTAIN series of studies supporting the FDA approval also included Chinese subjects.
The signal released behind this is very clear: Eli Lilly did not merely regard Orforglipron as a product supplement for the US market; instead, it is advancing it according to the logic of a global blockbuster drug, especially China, which has been placed in its key market list in advance.
What is more notable is that the clinical performance of this drug in Chinese patients also gives it more room for expansion in the Asian market. For weight loss drugs, simply losing how much weight is of course important, but what truly determines whether a drug can continue to grow is often whether it can simultaneously improve a wider range of metabolic risk indicators. Improvements in factors such as waist circumference, blood lipids, triglycerides, and systolic blood pressure mean that such drugs are being given more value by the market, not just for weight loss, but also as an entry point for metabolic management.
This is why the capital market quickly elevated it to an extremely high position.
Wall Street is betting on a new category explosion.
After the approval of Orforglipron, almost all major institutions began to rapidly update their models. Several leading brokerage firms predict that the sales of this drug will reach between 1.5 billion and 2.8 billion US dollars in 2026; more optimistic predictions suggest that it could reach 6 billion US dollars by 2027; and some institutions have directly projected a peak sales figure of over 40 billion US dollars.
This expectation may seem aggressive, but the logic is not complicated.
The injectable form has completed market education, and doctors know that GLP-1 is effective, patients know that GLP-1 can reduce weight, and payers are increasingly reluctant to ignore the long-term benefits brought by such drugs. What truly affects the ceiling of the industry in the future is no longer just efficacy, but rather who can provide a solution that is more acceptable, easier to take for a long time, and can be produced on a large scale.
Oral medication precisely corresponds to all of this.
That is to say, Eli Lilly's acquisition of this is not just the initial advantage of a product, but rather it is like seizing the most critical entry point for the next round of industry expansion first. Once oral weight-loss drugs start to rapidly penetrate the market, the competitive landscape of the entire GLP-1 market will be rewritten.
Novo Nordisk will not lose immediately, but it has indeed been dragged into a new battlefield
The most direct target of Eli Lilly's immediate impact is Novo Nordisk.
For a considerable period of time in the past, Novo Nordisk has established a strong voice in the GLP-1 weight loss market through the semaglutide system. Especially in the oral direction, the market originally believed that Novo Nordisk had deeper accumulated advantages. But now, Eli Lilly has first launched oral weight-loss drugs on the market, which has literally torn open a gap in the original time window belonging to Novo Nordisk.
From a short-term perspective, Novo Nordisk is still not without advantages. Early data indicate that oral semaglutide performs better in terms of weight loss, with an average weight loss of approximately 16.6% over 64 weeks of continuous use, while Eli Lilly's Orforglipron shows an average weight loss of approximately 12.4% over 72 weeks. If only looking at the numbers, Novo Nordisk can still compete.
But the problem lies precisely in that weight loss drugs ultimately do not necessarily rely solely on numbers.
The biggest commercial weapon of Eli Lilly's product is not that it is the most effective in terms of weight loss at present, but that it is a small molecule drug, with simpler manufacturing processes, lower manufacturing difficulties, and fewer dosage restrictions. For a market that may cover hundreds of millions of people in the future, this is almost the core variable that determines the outcome. Because efficacy advantages can only help you win some of the high-end markets, but supply capacity, cost structure, and ease of use determine whether you can truly penetrate, understand, and expand the market deeply.
This is why the market believes that Eli Lilly's advantage in the oral track will continue to expand until around 2030.
The real drama will unfold when the Chinese market is ignited
Although Orforglipron has not yet been approved in China, Eli Lilly China clearly does not want to hide its pace. The management has openly expressed their desire to accelerate the process of its launch in China, essentially preheating for this competition.
The reasons are very realistic. China has one of the largest populations of overweight and obese people in the world, and is also one of the most important growth markets for weight loss drugs in the future. Whoever completes the access, education, and scaling-up in the oral weight loss drug market in China first will have the opportunity to secure more decisive pieces in the global competition.
More importantly, the Chinese market is highly sensitive to price, accessibility, and supply stability. This means that once oral weight loss drugs enter China, the product that ultimately emerges may not be just the one with the strongest clinical effect, but more likely the one with the most balanced overall capabilities, the highest commercial efficiency, and the most stable supply chain. In other words, China will quickly drag this competition from laboratory comparisons to a real commercial battle.
The oral weight loss drug war is not about a new product, but about an industry revaluation
The approval of Eli Lilly's Orforglipron is a very clear turning point in the weight loss drug industry.
It means that the market is shifting from the injection-dominated first half to the oral formulation-driven second half. In the coming years, the industry will not only compete on the reduction in weight, but also on a more complex set of capabilities: clinical data, manufacturing processes, cost structure, compliance, global supply, market access, and who can more quickly turn a drug from a bestseller into a basic treatment tool.
In this sense, Eli Lilly's shot is not only aimed at Novo Nordisk, but also at the new order of the entire weight loss drug industry.
The real oral weight loss drug war has just begun now.
