In this articleLLYNVOFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTA pharmacist displays a box of Wegovy pills at a pharmacy in Provo, Utah, Jan. 15, 2026.George Frey | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe future of the booming obesity drug market won’t hinge on drugs that deliver greater weight loss alone. Top executives from drugmakers big and small told CNBC that the next phase of the space will be defined by a broader range of treatment options and improved access for patients. Those were among the themes that emerged at the annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco during interviews with top brass from Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer and other drugmakers. “We really see the obesity market going from, in this year, a one-size-fits-all kind of idea to different medicines for different patients. We don’t have a crystal ball to know how that all sorts out,” Dan Skovronsky, Eli Lilly’s chief scientific officer, told CNBC in an interview at the conference.”But I think by presenting people with options, they’ll pick for themselves with their doctors, and I think we want to have something for everyone,” he continued. “And we’re not done yet.” Over the coming years, executives expect an expanding menu of obesity treatments that can be tailored to an individual patient’s needs — from pills and less-frequent injections to combination regimens and drugs designed to preserve muscle mass while promoting weight loss. Some also expect the direct-to-consumer market to become an even larger slice of the market, while hoping that hurdles preventing patients from getting treatment continue to fall.Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are widely credited with establishing the market through their weekly GLP-1 injections for obesity and diabetes, which have surged in popularity in recent years. The next chapter is already taking shape, with Novo launching the first GLP-1 pill for obesity earlier this month and Lilly preparing to bring an oral option of its own to market later this year. While those companies will play a critical role in how the space evolves, other players from pharma titan Pfizer to little-known upstarts could also enter the market — both threatening the two rivals’ sales dominance and offering more treatment alternatives for consumers.While access remains a challenge for many patients, the ability to get GLP-1s has improved notably over the past year. Both Novo and Lilly have slashed cash prices for their injections and struck deals with President Donald Trump in November that will, for the first time, introduce Medicare coverage for obesity drugs later this year.More treatment options and wider access could boost the case for analyst projections that say the weight loss and diabetes drug market could be worth almost $100 billion annually by the end of the decade. In an interview at the conference, Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar said the company and Lilly currently have around 15 million people combined who have obesity taking GLP-1s. There is still a “long tail” to reaching the 110 million that are reportedly suffering from the condition, along with those who are overweight, he added. In a May report, McKinsey said it expects a range of 25 to 50 million U.S. patients to use GLP-1s by 2030. Here’s what executives say the future of the space could look like. The pill potentialPills have not yet proven more effective than injections. Still, the consensus among executives is that oral options could expand the market, reaching entirely new patients. That may include people who are afraid of needles, as well as people who could benefit from existing injections but don’t view their condition as severe enough to warrant a weekly shot.In an interview at the conference, Doustdar said it could also include people who travel frequently and can’t easily refrigerate injections. “There is so much aligned exactly with this market expansion story … because there is a huge number of patients that are simply not interested in losing weight at the cost of injecting themselves,” Doustdar said. The “real growth” and uptake of the pills is going to come from primary care physicians, who write the majority of prescriptions for Americans and typically prefer pills to injections, said Ray Stevens, the CEO of obesity market hopeful Structure Therapeutics. He said he believes his company’s GLP-1 pill, aleniglipron, will be the third to enter the market after Eli Lilly’s and Novo Nordisk’s. Structure’s oral drug will enter Phase 3 trials this year. Daily pills can offer more flexibility to patients. For example, Stevens said a patient could cut a pill in half to mitigate side effects on a day when they have an important meeting to attend. Lilly’s Skovronsky said pills will also serve as a way for patients to “deescalate their therapy” after taking injections. The company in December released data showing that patients who initially took Wegovy or Zepbound shots maintained the majority of their weight loss after switching to Lilly’s …
