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Pfizer has ended the development of its daily weight loss pill after a patient experienced a liver injury potentially caused by the drug, according to reporting from CNBC. The patient didn’t show liver-related symptoms but had elevated liver enzymes that recovered quickly after stopping the medication, information shared by CNBC indicates. This case occurred during a trial that rapidly increased the drug’s dosage over a short period.
Despite this setback, Pfizer’s Chief Scientific Officer Chris Boshoff expressed continued commitment to developing other weight loss treatments. This adds to a series of disappointments in Pfizer’s attempts to enter the booming GLP-1 market, which CNBC reports could be worth more than $150 billion by the early 2030s, with oral versions potentially capturing $50 billion of that total.
The Wall Street Journal notes that this decision keeps Pfizer out of the highly lucrative obesity drug market for now. This market could reach $100 billion by the end of the decade, according to analyst projections cited in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the announcement. Despite these challenges, Pfizer had appeared confident about the once-daily form as recently as July, when it planned to start conducting additional studies, Wall Street Journal reports. The company did note that the once-daily version of danuglipron met key goals in its dosing study before the development was halted. The Wall Street Journal adds that Pfizer declined to provide additional details about the specific liver injury that led to this decision.
Yahoo Finance indicates this news surprised Wall Street but didn’t significantly impact the company’s stock, which traded mostly flat on Monday morning. According to a JPMorgan analyst quoted by Yahoo Finance, investors weren’t assigning much value to danuglipron, limiting the downside risk to Pfizer’s current valuation.
This development represents another bump in what Yahoo Finance describes as a “bumpy ride” in Pfizer’s attempts to compete with market leaders Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk in the obesity treatment space. The company had previously scrapped another twice-daily pill in 2023 due to similar liver concerns, as reported in Yahoo Finance’s coverage.
Pfizer has been under pressure to find new blockbuster drugs as some of its key products approach patent expiration and many are in the pipeline according to Pfizer’s Product Pipeline. Yahoo Finance notes this includes the Prevnar 13 vaccine next year and cancer drug Ibrance in 2028, which together generated $10.8 billion in 2024 revenue. With danuglipron’s development now halted, Mizuho healthcare expert Jared Holz suggested to Yahoo Finance that Pfizer might look to acquire external assets if it wants to remain in the weight-loss market.