In the Sunday Times:
No more needles — a fat-busting pill is on its way to Britain
The boss of Eli Lilly says the tablet will help millions of people keen to shed pounds but uneasy about injecting themselves
Shaun Lintern, Health Editor
September 7 2025, The Sunday Times
Britain will be one of the first countries in the world to get a fat-busting once-a-day pill next year, the head of the world’s largest pharmaceutical giant has said.
More than 1.5 million people in the UK inject themselves every week with weight-loss drugs, driving billions of pounds in sales for companies such as Eli Lilly, the American manufacturer of Mounjaro.
From next year, the battle against obesity will become even easier. The company promises that its tablet will bring the weight-loss revolution to millions more people uneasy about injecting themselves and opens up the prospects of supplying developing countries more easily.
Patrik Jonsson, international president of Eli Lilly, believes the pill — Orforglipron — could be a “game-changer” for the weight-loss industry which it is estimated could be worth $100 billion by 2030. “The UK will be one of the first countries,” said Jonsson, 59. “I would expect to see Orforglipron in the UK in 2026, subject to regulatory approval.”
The company is also investigating a holy grail of obesity treatments — a single shot that could “cure” obesity for good. “The dream for our researchers, what inspires them,” said Jonsson, “is actually a once-and-done treatment on obesity. You get one shot and then you’re taken care of for the rest of your life.”
Such a drug was years away, he cautioned, but confirmed candidates were being actively researched. “If we could be the ones that bring a once-and-done to treating obesity, that would be a huge contribution to humanity.”
While this might be a pipe dream, the prospect of a daily pill is just around the corner.
According to the latest clinical trial results announced last month, Orforglipron delivered clinically meaningful weight loss of around 10 per cent, with two fifths of patients losing up to 15 per cent of their weight.
While this is less than the 20 per cent patients might achieve by injecting Mounjaro, the tablet can be taken without food or water restrictions and is much easier to manufacture, store and transport. It is likely to be cheaper to buy than the injectable versions of the drugs although Lilly has yet to reveal the price.
The drugs work by mimicking natural hormones in the body that curtail cravings and appetite, slow down digestion and control blood sugars.
They are not without risk. They can have serious side-effects including gastrointestinal problems and pancreatitis. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has received hundreds of reports of acute and chronic pancreatitis, including ten deaths, among people taking all versions of the drugs.
Regardless, demand for them has created a huge private market after the NHS warned it will take 12 years or more to roll out the jabs to the 3.4 million people eligible to receive it.
Online pharmacies and high-street chains are selling the drugs for between £150 and £300 a month but there are concerns private users may be unaware of the need for strength training exercises. Some studies suggest a third of the weight loss can be lean muscle, putting patients at risk of becoming frail.
Jonsson accepted Eli Lilly and other drug companies had a responsibility to educate people and provide information adding: “We are stating very clearly on our label that all of those studies have been conducted in combination with dietary instructions and exercise.”
Once a person stops taking the medicines, if they have not also made lifestyle and diet changes, they can put the weight back on. This could mean some patients will require treatment for life.
Jonsson defended this, saying obesity needed to be seen as a chronic disease driven by both biological and genetic factors. Such concerns would never be raised about a diabetes patient or a patient with rheumatoid arthritis, he said. “Obesity itself generates more than 200 comorbidities. Those comorbidities include type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. So if you look at obesity through that lens, it is obvious that we should be treating the disease.”
While companies such as Lilly are making billions from selling the drugs — it is predicting total revenue of $60 billion (£44 billion) this year, the market for injections has a limit.
Jonsson said many patients do not want to inject themselves, adding: “If I take the combined capacity of ourselves and the competition, we cannot meet the global needs with injectables. [With the pill] I think we have an opportunity to reach patients in parts of the world where we don’t rely on the cold chain. It is an opportunity to really scale and provide treatment for patients that we otherwise wouldn’t access or who wouldn’t consider an injectable.”
He said the pill would also be attractive to patients who had a body mass index of between 27 and 35 — overweight to mildly obese — who are not chasing the maximum weight loss offered by Mounjaro. “They have a target in mind. For those patients, Orforglipron can probably meet their needs extremely well, if approved.”
The company is highly secretive about where the pill will be made but it is expected the large 170-acre Lilly plant in Kinsale, Co Cork, Ireland, will be among the sites making the active ingredient. Speaking from there last week Jonsson confirmed: “This site is going to play a role in the project.”
The plant is a key manufacturing hub for the active peptide ingredient in Mounjaro injections. It is made inside a six-floor building, opened in April last year. Machines work continuously 24 hours a day to make doses of the drug. It is thought to be the first time continuous manufacturing has been achieved with computers sampling and monitoring the process in real time and is one way that Eli Lilly has stolen a march on its rival Novo Nordisk by ensuring it has enough drugs to meet supply demand.
The Irish plant employs 1,100 staff from 34 countries and represents a big investment that Jonsson said the UK government was unlikely to get.
Last week he was in Downing Street lobbying the government to increase its spending on drugs. “I was part of an assessment just six months ago when we assessed whether we should open another European manufacturing site. The UK didn’t make it to the list because the conditions are not competitive enough.”
He pointed to data showing the UK spends just 9 per cent of its healthcare budget on medicines compared with an OECD average of 14 per cent.
Eli Lilly had pledged to open a £279 million Gateway Lab site in London that would be an incubator for next generation drugs but the company announced a pause in the investment this year in response to the government’s lack of ambition on life sciences.
Jonsson said: “We have not closed the doors to the UK, not by any means. But we need to see some signs from the UK government that they really are making a bet on the life science industry. “When I started in the industry, 55 per cent of all of the innovative medicines actually came out of Europe. Today, it’s around 35 per cent. We’re losing ground to China, we’re losing ground to the US. We have a really important decision to make. Do we want to be in or out?”
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, pulled out of talks on increasing spending on drugs, warning he would not let drug companies “rip off” the taxpayer. President Trump has put pressure on drug companies to cut costs for Americans and return manufacturing to the US.
Despite the global pressures Jonsson was upbeat about the industry, pointing to advances in cancer treatments and emerging drugs for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, as well as the weight-loss progress.
“I think the geopolitical situation today doesn’t necessarily make it easy to bring those medicines to the people that need them. But that’s where we need to work together with governments and within the industry to make sure that we are enabling patients to get access to those medicines.”