By Maggie Fick
LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Danish biotech firm Zealand Pharma on Thursday said it will accelerate development and expand its research as it seeks to differentiate its experimental obesity drug candidates in an increasingly competitive race targeting metabolic health.
“We unveil our aim to build a generational biotech company that will fundamentally transform how we treat obesity and metabolic disease,” CEO Adam Steensberg said in a statement ahead of a capital markets day for investors in London.
The company, whose shares are down 28% so far this year, will lay out a strategy targeting five obesity and metabolic drug launches by 2030.
The speed of clinical development is crucial as the market for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs booms amid record global obesity, with analysts forecasting annual sales of about $150 billion by the early 2030s.
Zealand’s most promising drug candidate is petrelintide, developed with Roche, which targets the pancreatic hormone amylin and has shown fewer and less severe gastrointestinal side effects in early trials than Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound.
Mid-stage trial data for petrelintide is expected in the first quarter of 2026, Zealand said. Last year, it reported that a high dose of the drug cut weight by an average of 8.6% after 16 weekly doses in an early-stage study.
Zealand said it will open a new Boston research site that combines its peptide drug expertise with AI‑driven discovery tools.
The site will advance an oral small‑molecule platform that Zealand will develop with Chinese biotech firm OTR Therapeutics to enable discovery of new treatments for metabolic diseases, the company said.
Under a deal unveiled on Thursday, OTR will receive $20 million upfront, rising to $30 million if certain conditions are met, and up to about $2.5 billion in milestone payments plus royalties on any products that reach the market.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick in London and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, editing by Essi Lehto and Thomas Derpinghaus)
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