Healthy Returns: How competitive can Roche be in the weight loss drug market?

In this article RHHBF Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT Headquarters of Roche, multinational pharmaceutical industry on December 27, 2021 in Madrid, Spain. Cristina Arias | Cover | Getty Images A version of this article first appeared in CNBC's Healthy Returns newsletter, which brings the latest health-care news straight to your inbox. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

Good afternoon! Roche is one of several drugmakers hoping to join the booming weight loss drug market, which Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are currently dominating. But can the Swiss company develop drugs that can compete with that duopoly? The answer isn't clear yet. We need to see more data from longer and larger clinical trials, which will likely take years for Roche to conduct.

But the company last week presented more early-stage data more early-stage data on its experimental obesity injection and pill, which some analysts said raised concerns about how competitive those products can be if they enter the space. Some analysts said the new results showed that both drugs – which Roche acquired through its nearly $3 billion acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics in December – caused a higher rate of side effects than expected. "Investor excitement for Roche's obesity franchise may now take a pause, in our view, given both acquired [drugs] showed higher-than-anticipated [gastroinsteinal] side effects," Jefferies analysts said in a note on Wednesday, noting that the trials aggressively increas.