By Michele Gershberg and Michael Erman
PHILADELPHIA, March 16 (Reuters) – The CEO of Roche’s Genentech unit, Ashley Magargee, said on Monday the company is striving to build a portfolio of obesity medicines that are both tolerable in terms of side effects and affordable.
“A lot of patients are dropping off therapy for various reasons,” said Magargee, speaking at the Reuters Pharma USA 2026 event in Philadelphia, pointing to a need for long-term weight maintenance and combination therapies for people who are not responding to just one medicine.
“How can you not just get these new medicines to patients, but also, how can you get an affordable portfolio of medicines to treat all the needs across the patient population?” she said.
Roche acquired rights to petrelintide, an experimental obesity treatment developed by Denmark’s Zealand Pharma, through a collaboration and licensing deal worth up to $5.3 billion that was signed last year. Genentech also has several other obesity treatment candidates in its pipeline.
Unprecedented demand for potent new weight-loss drugs from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk initially led analysts to project an obesity drug market of $150 billion – or even $200 billion – by the early 2030s. But more recent 2030 forecasts are around 30% lower at about $100 billion or so.
FLU MEDICINE TO BE NEXT UP ON TRUMPRX
Roche’s Xofluza flu drug will be on the U.S. government’s TrumpRx.gov website when the administration launches the next tranche of medicines there, she said. The website directs patients to drug companies’ direct-to-consumer sites.
Xofluza is now available directly on the company’s own website for $50 for cash-paying customers, a distribution channel the company says it sees as amenable to oral drugs rather than physician-assisted medicines.
“We’re certainly experimenting and bringing many more through that channel than we ever have,” said Magargee.
Genentech is one of the 16 global drugmakers that have struck deals with U.S. President Donald Trump to cut the prices of their medicines for the government’s Medicaid program and for U.S. cash payers in exchange for tariff relief.
(Reporting by Michele Gershberg and Michael Erman; writing by Caroline Humer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Nia Williams)
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