Shrinking Obesity Tops Oncology in Deloitte’s 2025 Pipeline
Shrinking oncology’s lead, obesity now accounts for 25% of biopharma pipeline value in Deloitte’s 2025 analysis, versus 20% for cancer. The shift leaves drug developers with a narrower pool of programs driving more of the sector’s late-stage value.
25% is the first time obesity has led Deloitte’s pipeline ranking, and it comes after oncology held 26% in 2024 while obesity rose to 16%. For investors in the biggest drug makers, the move puts more weight on weight-loss programs and less on the broad cancer portfolios that had dominated the model.
2022 to 2025 reversal
1% of forecast revenues for the top 20 biopharma companies came from obesity in 2022, compared with 32% from oncology. By 2023, cancer was still first, leading infectious disease by 18 percentage points, but the gap has since closed fast as obesity moved from a niche contributor to the top source of pipeline value.
96% of the value Deloitte assigns to obesity assets sits with three unnamed drug developers, a concentration that leaves the category exposed to execution at a very small number of companies. Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are the clear leaders in the space, while Pfizer has bet big to join them and Roche is aiming to become a top three player.
Blockbusters Drive 70%
54 blockbuster asset-indications, about 9% of the late-stage cohort, account for around 70% of total risk-adjusted peak sales. Average forecast peak sales per asset rose to $598 million from $510 million in 2024, but excluding GLP-1/GIP drugs, the figure fell to $353 million from $370 million.
7% was the projected internal rate of return on late-stage pipeline assets in 2025, up from 5.9% a year earlier. Excluding GLP-1/GIP drugs, the rate fell to 2.9% from 3.8%, showing how much the headline improvement depends on a narrow slice of obesity-led programs.
GLP-1 Combinations Concentrate Value
53% of value came from novel mechanisms in 2025, up from 35% in 2024, and 10 mechanisms, primarily GLP-1 combinations, accounted for 60% of the value of those new approaches. The number of asset-indications forecast to clear $10 billion in peak sales rose to eight from six, while the average value of those mega-blockbusters increased 14.7%.
$2.67 billion was the cost to bring one single asset from discovery to launch in 2025, up from $2.23 billion in 2024. Deloitte said the consolidation creates "a precarious balance of high potential returns and the risk of significant value destruction from a single program failure," which is the real risk for a market leaning so hard on a few obesity winners.
