Roche has more than five weight-loss companion medicines, CEO says

Roche Holding AG has more than five medicines that it could combine with weight-loss drugs, CEO Thomas Schinecker said, as the Swiss drugmaker tries to crack the pharmaceutical industry’s fastest-growing market.

Combination therapy could help treat kidney, liver and heart disease, Schinecker said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. Roche is also working on experimental treatments that could help patients who’ve lost muscle mass due to rapid weight loss on the powerful new shots, Schinecker said.

“We believe that medicines that are currently on the market will actually not serve all the needs that patients have,” the CEO said.

With some 50% of the world’s population likely to be obese by the 2030s, Roche’s obesity assets could be “a kind of backbone to address a number of different health-care challenges in the world,” he said. Obesity may drive conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Roche’s push into obesity is a cornerstone of Schinecker’s effort to overhaul the Swiss drugmaker’s portfolio of experimental medicines after a series of clinical trial failures in cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The company will face off in the area with leaders Novo Nordisk A/S and Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co.

Roche is working on oral and injectable weight-loss products that the CEO said were effective and differentiated. Roche stock fell last month after investors focused on side effects shown in a pair of small, early studies presented at a diabetes-focused medical meeting.

At the same meeting, investors’ excitement grew about the potential for a new type of next-generation obesity treatment that targets obesity via amylin, a hormone released by the pancreas together with insulin. On Tuesday, Schinecker batted away a suggestion that Roche would need to do a deal in order to acquire its own amylin asset, potentially via Danish biotech Zealand Pharma A/S.

“We have never said we don’t have an amylin in-house,” the CEO said, including a number of pipeline projects that haven’t yet been made public. “We always need to look at different opportunities, but we say no to 99.999% of the topics.”

Roche Diagnostics, a unit of Roche, has its U.S. headquarters based on a huge corporate campus on the northeast side of Indianapolis.