Merck gains global rights to Hansoh Pharma’s experimental oral weight loss drug, HS-10535.
The milestone payments and royalties would be about $1.9 billion and Merck will also pay Hansoh an initial 112 million dollars.
This drug is supposed to work by balancing appetite and blood sugar, just like the mechanism of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Ozempic, which work on the GLP-1 hormone.
Key Background:
In December 2024, Merck declared a licensing agreement of $2 billion with Chinese drug maker Hansoh Pharma for the development of a weight loss experimental pill. Merck is given an exclusive right to the rest of the world for an oral pre-clinical stage drug called HS-10535, which works by blocking the hormone produced by the gut, known as GLP-1, which is in charge of regulating blood sugar and controlling appetite.
Under the terms of the deal, Merck will pay Hansoh $112 million upfront but has an opportunity of as much as $1.9 billion more in the form of milestone payments depending on how well the drug will fare. According to Merck, it is a strategic step because the obesity and metabolic disorders market is growing fast enough to reach $100 billion by the early 2030s.
Even though HS-10535 has not reached human trials, Merck seeks to address obesity and associated diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In the weight loss market, competition is tough. For example, Pfizer and Roche are developing oral drugs for injectables like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro.
H S 10535 would compete as a GLP-1-receptor agonist, comparable to Wegovy and Ozempic among other competitive products that inhibit appetite to reduce blood glucose levels and blood pressures as well. But the advantage Merck claims with their drug is offering additional cardio-metabolic benefits while causing weight loss – and those benefits are enhancements of all three: CV health improvement, diabetes prevention, or even fatty liver disease. This licensing deal is part of the growing trend among pharmaceutical companies, like AstraZeneca, to collaborate with Chinese firms for developing oral GLP-1 drugs.