While the rapid growth of the GLP-1 and obesity market presents enormous financial opportunities for life sciences companies, it also carries legal, regulatory, and reimbursement risks. With that in mind, Norstella were recently invited to present a session at the American Conference Institute Inaugural Summit on GLP-1 Law & Policy, Using deals data from Evaluate and Citeline, my session focused on strategic pharma deals and investment moves influencing the obesity market, while others presented on intellectual property, regulatory and enforcement challenges, pharmacovigilance and litigation amongst other topics.

Some of the historical trends I presented, setting the scene for GLP-1 deal making in the obesity space were:

1. The obesity sector has witnessed robust strategic deal activity with pharma companies demonstrating unprecedented appetite for licensing and acquisition opportunities since the effective creation of the market in 2021.
2. Investment in obesity-focused private biotech companies has grown tenfold between 2019 and 2025, reaching nearly $1 billion in 2025 (annualized).
3. This surge reflects the recognition that obesity represents one of the most significant unmet medical need, with over four billion people globally estimated to be obese or overweight by 2035.

Furthermore I wanted to demonstrate how R&D trends in obesity are being reflected in GLP-1 deal making activity. Some of the observations presented included:

1. Continued focus on licensing deals over M&A while new therapeutic approaches, whether they be alternative targets to GLP-1, development of oral drugs or use of combination therapies remain in early stage clinical research.
2. With improved compliance and weight maintenance becoming more important, companies will be looking externally for alternative approaches.
3. Combination therapies (GLP1s + emerging drugs) are being used for unmet need including lean mass preservation, weight maintenance, and improved tolerance.
4. China remains a focus for deals with multinationals spending big to target innovation relating to certain mechanisms or new modalities.

Looking to the future of what this means for GLP-1 deal making, the central message is that obesity is still very much a hot bed as there is need to invest in emerging modalities that can be combined/co-administered with GLP-1s and mitigate risks/target the residual unmet need associated with GLP-1s including the serious side effects such as nausea, vomiting, weight regain and excessive muscle loss.

The above is just a snippet of what was presented at the GLP-1 summit. We’ll be sharing a full report based on the data soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about Evaluate’s data in the GLP-1 space, you can get in touch here.