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Chinese Biotech Showcases Challenger to Eli Lilly’s Obesity Drug
By Amber Tong
June 22, 2025 at 3:45 AM GMT+8
- Hangzhou Sciwind Biosciences Co.'s obesity drug, ecnoglutide, led to more than 15% weight loss after 48 weeks when given at the highest dose in a late-stage clinical trial.
- Ecnoglutide is currently under regulatory review in China to treat both obesity and diabetes, and an approval could come as soon as early 2026.
- Sciwind aims to capture more than 10% share in the China market, which it views as worth more than 100 billion yuan.
Summary by Bloomberg AI
An obesity drug from China helped patients lose a lot of weight in a late-stage clinical trial, making it a prospective new challenger to blockbusters from Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly & Co.
Hangzhou Sciwind Biosciences Co. said its drug, ecnoglutide, led to more than 15% weight loss after 48 weeks when given at the highest dose. Although the trial did not compare ecnoglutide directly with existing medicines, the results were very similar to what Lilly’s Zepbound showed in previous China studies, Sciwind Chief Executive Officer Hai Pan said in an interview.
Ecnoglutide, administered as a once-weekly injection, is currently under regulatory review in China to treat both obesity and diabetes, and an approval could come as soon as early 2026, he said. Sciwind is in early-stage discussions with potential partners to develop the drug outside of the country.
Pan highlighted that around 93% of all patients given the highest dose of ecnoglutide lost at least 5% of their weight, according to results that were presented at the annual conference of the American Diabetes Association and published in a journal of The Lancet. That result appears better than the 85%-87% observed in China trials of Wegovy and Zepbound.
“This is actually really crucial,” Pan said. “It gives patients confidence that once you use our drug, you can lower your weight.”
Once approved, Sciwind’s ecnoglutide will compete with Novo’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, as well as Innovent Biologics Inc. in the China market. Innovent’s drug, initially licensed from Lilly, also showed weight loss on par with Zepbound and is expected to be approved soon.
The competition is only set to intensify further: A recent reportfrom LEK Consulting counts more than 30 experimental weight loss drugs in China’s late-stage pipeline.
Still, Sciwind aims to capture more than 10% share in what it views as a market worth more than 100 billion yuan ($13.9 billion), according to Pan.
Mimicking Effects
Sciwind’s drug works similarly to Wegovy — by mimicking the effects of a natural hormone called GLP-1 that regulates blood sugar and appetite. But it has a slightly different structure that Pan believes makes the drug more effective and safer than other GLP-1 receptor agonists, and on par with newer drugs that also target another hormone.
In addition to weight loss, patients in the trial saw improvements in other markers of metabolic health, such as blood pressure, uric acid and liver fat. The most common side effects were nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
Outside of China, Sciwind has tested ecnoglutide in Australia and New Zealand and has a deal to commercialize it in South Korea. But it’s yet to launch studies in the US or Europe. Nonetheless, the clinical results are likely to be generalizable to other populations, Imperial College London professor Tricia Tan wrote in a Lancet commentary linked to Sciwind’s paper.
“Ecnoglutide represents a viable competitor in the GLP-1 analogue market, and it is hoped that its introduction will help to increase the global availability of these effective obesity treatments,” she wrote.
The firm is developing more treatments of diabetes, obesity and other metabolic conditions. Three of them were out-licensed to UK biotech startup Verdiva Bio Ltd., which debuted with $411 million in funding earlier this year. |
