Key Summary
- Obesity overtakes cancer as pharma's top value area for the first time in 16 years.
- GLP-1 drugs now represent 38 percent of all projected late-stage pipeline revenue.
- Drug development costs jumped 20 percent to $2.67 billion per asset.
Obesity drugs now account for 25 percent of total pipeline value - a huge jump from just 1 percent in 2022, according to Deloitte, which analyses the late-stage drug development pipelines of the top 20 global biopharma companies.
For the first time in 16 years of tracking, obesity has replaced oncology as the largest contributor to pharmaceutical pipeline value.
This is almost entirely driven by GLP-1 drugs (like Ozempic, Wegovy) which now represent 38 percent of all projected revenue from late-stage pipelines.
Concentration of value in obesity drugs raises risks.
The pharmaceutical industry's R&D returns reached 7.0 percent in 2025, but when GLP-1s are excluded, returns drop to just 2.9 percent (down from 3.8 percent in 2024). This shows the industry is becoming heavily dependent on one drug class.
It also found that the average cost to develop a drug is $2,671 million in 2025. It was $2,229 million in 2024.
This 20 percent increase comes from both rising R&D spending (17 of 20 companies increased spend) and fewer assets in pipelines.
Revenue forecasts are rising unevenly. Average forecast peak sales per asset went from $510 million (2024) to $598 million (2025). However, without GLP-1s, it is only $353 million - down from $370 million in 2024.
In 2025, just 9 percent of pipeline assets (54 blockbusters) generate approximately 70 percent of total projected sales. Mega-blockbusters (>$10 billion peak sales) increased from 6 to 8 assets.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of pipeline assets have forecast peak sales below $250 million.
Colin Terry, Life Sciences partner at Deloitte, said: "While the headline figures suggest a robust recovery in R&D productivity, our analysis uncovered an industry wide critical dependency on GLP-1 drugs that could create a 'bubble' effect. This concentration of value into a few mega-blockbuster drugs, while exciting, exposes the industry to risk once launched.”
