AbbVie is the newest potential weight loss drug player

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The booming weight loss drug market has gained a new potential competitor. 

AbbVie said on Monday that it will pay up to $2.2 billion to develop Danish drugmaker Gubra’s experimental obesity drug, marking its late foray into the segment. 

Under the terms of the deal, the pharmaceutical giant will pay Gubra $350 million upfront. AbbVie will also pay up to nearly $1.9 billion if the drug meets certain development and sales milestones. 

Gubra, which provides pre-clinical contract research and peptide-based drug discovery services, will be eligible to receive certain royalties on global net sales of the drug, called GUB014295. Shares OF Gubra closed 15% higher on Monday after the licensing agreement was announced. 

Here’s what’s important to know about the medicine: It is an injection that mimics amylin, a different gut hormone than the existing obesity drugs on the market target. 

Amylin activates signals to the brain that suppress appetite and reduce food intake, according to AbbVie. The hormone also slows so-called gastric emptying, or the process by which the contents of the stomach are moved into the small intestine.

Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster obesity treatment Wegovy mimics a hormone called GLP-1 to tamp down appetite and regulate blood sugar, while Eli Lilly‘s own drug Zepbound targets both GLP-1 and another hormone called GIP. 

A few companies, including Novo Nordisk, Zealand Pharma, AstraZeneca and Structure Therapeutics, are developing products that target amylin. Some of those drugs are further along in development than Gubra’s medicine, such as Zealand’s petrelintide, but it is still too early to know which one is most effective for weight loss. 

Some drugmakers believe that targeting amylin could reduce the gastrointestinal side effects typically seen with treatments that target GLP-1, and may lead to less muscle loss than existing drugs. But those effects have to be proven in clinical trials. 

In a research note Monday, BMO analyst Evan Seigerman said “all-in we’re positive on the deal” for AbbVie. He said the company’s entrance into the obesity market could “come with synergies” to other areas of its business, such as inflammation and aesthetics. 

For example, researchers are studying the inflammatory benefits of obesity drugs for conditions such as a serious form of liver disease, cardiovascular outcomes and Alzheimer’s, among others, Seigerman wrote. 

“We see an opportunity for AbbVie to leverage their expertise in this space to better understand these potential benefits,” he added. 

An obesity drug could also complement AbbVie’s aesthetics business, which offers Botox, other facial injectables, skin care and body contouring, among other products, according to Seigerman. 

Notably, the deal comes as AbbVie looks for its next top-selling drug following the patent expiration for its mega blockbuster autoimmune medicine Humira. 

“Our partnership with Gubra marks our entry into the obesity field, offering a compelling opportunity based on the potential to address patient needs while also fostering long-term growth for our company,” AbbVie CEO Robert Michael, who took over just over six months ago, said in a statement on Monday. 

The deal, however, could be a “potential negative” for Structure Therapeutics, Seigerman said. 

That biotech company is still looking for potential partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies to further develop and commercialize its experimental GLP-1 and amylin products.

Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

This is Ashley, reporting live from Las Vegas, Nevada! 

I’m here on the ground at the 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition, where health care and technology leaders are touting their latest and greatest innovations. The exhibition floor opens up today, but there’s already been a flurry of announcements, primarily around – yes, you guessed it – artificial intelligence. 

Here’s everything you need to know so far:

• Microsoft on Monday announced a new health-care AI assistant called Dragon Copilot that builds on its existing dictation and ambient listening solutions. It’s the company’s latest push to stand out within the fiercely competitive AI scribing market, which has grown immensely in recent years. Read CNBC’s coverage here. 
• Amazon on Monday said it’s bringing Amazon One to NYU Langone Health, which means patients will be able to check in for appointments by simply scanning their palm. The service will help NYU Langone speed up the sign-in process and alleviate administrative workloads. Read CNBC’s coverage here.
• Google on Monday announced new generative AI capabilities in its platform Vertex AI Search for health care, which allows developers to train, tune and deploy different AI models and applications. The company said Gemini 2.0 is now available as one of the models in the offering, and a new feature called Visual Q&A will allow doctors to search diagrams, tables and charts.
• Salesforce on Friday said it will launch Agentforce for Health, a suite of pre-built actions and skills that will allow providers, payers and others to easily build AI agents. Agentforce for Health specializes in public health, clinical skills and patient access and services. It comes after Salesforce announced Agentforce, an AI agent service, more broadly in September.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announced this week that the company is integrating its medical database UpToDate with Suki’s AI scribing tool and the health-care agent service in Microsoft Copilot Studio. Ideally, this will make it easier for doctors who use these platforms to pull up trusted medical resources more quickly and easily.
• GE HealthCare on Tuesday announced a new portfolio of cloud imaging software solutions called Genesis. The portfolio includes four different offerings that will help providers manage and store large quantities of medical images more easily, the company said.

There’s still plenty more to come this week (assuming I don’t get completely lost in The Venetian), so make sure you’re keeping up with CNBC’s coverage. I’ll have more on the big themes and takeaways I hear about over the next few days. 

Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.