A weight-loss and type-2 diabetes pill made by U.S. pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly could be available in China as soon as later next year, according to a company executive who spoke with Reuters.
The drug, called orforglipron, belongs to a class of medications known as GLP-1 treatments, which have dramatically changed how obesity is treated worldwide and reshaped the global pharmaceutical industry. Eli Lilly and Danish competitor Novo Nordisk are both betting that pill-based versions of these drugs will draw in patients who are unwilling to use injectable options.
Lilly Executive Vice President Patrik Jonsson said in a Tuesday interview that the Chinese launch window for orforglipron could fall “anything from late 2026 to early 2027.”
Lilly has an early advantage in China. The company announced in March that it had already filed a marketing application with Chinese regulators for the once-daily pill at the end of 2025. Reuters was not able to get a response from China’s National Medical Products Administration regarding approval timelines.
Novo Nordisk is not far behind. The Danish company’s CEO, Mike Doustdar, told reporters in Beijing last week that Novo plans to seek Chinese regulatory approval for its own weight-loss pill, Wegovy, “very soon.”
Both companies have already secured approvals in the United States. Novo Nordisk received early approval for Wegovy in pill form in the U.S. and Britain and launched it in the American market this year. Lilly followed with U.S. approval for orforglipron in April.
Jonsson said Lilly does not anticipate any supply shortages in China for orforglipron and intends to distribute the drug through existing partnerships with Chinese e-commerce and healthcare companies Alibaba and JD Health International.
The overall size of the weight-loss drug market in China is difficult to measure, as companies including Innovent Biologics, Pfizer, and Lilly do not publicly report their sales figures in the country. However, data from Jefferies shows that GLP-1 drug sales through major Chinese e-commerce platforms Alibaba and JD.com reached approximately 1.4 billion yuan — about $207 million — during the first quarter of this year.
