The investor narrative around Eli Lilly is deeply rooted in obesity. The blockbuster GLP-1 medications Mounjaro and Zepbound are driving the large pharma’s gains in revenue, which rose 39% year-over-year in the third quarter to $24.4 billion.
But the company is working to evolve that story in the coming years.
“We are bullish heading into [Lilly’s] Innovation event (Dec 7th), where management will expand the narrative beyond obesity,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Trung Huynh recently wrote, while bumping up the company’s 2026 revenue forecast from $89.8 billion to $91.2 billion.
The research firm Evaluate is also optimistic about Lilly’s prospecting, projecting that the company’s annual sales could hit $137 billion by 2032, nearly 60% higher than its closest projected rival, AbbVie. That forecast isn’t solely based on the continued success of its weight loss and diabetes drugs, but also hinges on its heavy investments in a diverse pipeline.
Lilly is putting substantial money into new drug research, paying $18.2 billion in the first nine months of 2026 on business development activities, including acquisitions of AtaiBeckley, Orna Therapeutics and Centessa Pharmaceuticals, according to its quarterly filing.
While Lilly’s pipeline includes clinical GLP-1 contenders such as retatrutide, a new weight-loss drug that has already attracted so much interest that patients are buying it illegally before it’s earned FDA approval, it is diversifying well beyond obesity. This year’s deals included psychedelic-based treatments, drugs for sleep disorders, cancer treatments, and inflammatory and autoimmune assets.
But Lilly hasn’t been immune from market and pipeline setbacks.
Its new GLP-1 weight-loss pill Foundayo has been slow out of the gate and is playing second fiddle to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill.
“Foundayo growth remains modest, but new starts skew towards the targeted lower-BMI population where ~25% of patients have reached maintenance dosing and the impending approval decision for T2D represents the next material inflection point,” Huynh wrote.
And not all of its pipeline bets on experimental drugs have paid off.
Although Lilly recently stopped disclosing information about its phase 1 programs, it has reported dropping several programs this year. Here are some of the candidates that were recently scrapped and why they didn’t work out.
Gene therapies run into trouble
Notable setbacks arose this year in Lilly’s gene therapy programs. Among its recent pipeline stumbles was LY3884963, which the company gained in its $1 billion acquisition of Prevail Therapeutics in 2021. The therapy was dropped after it didn’t meet the efficacy bar in phase 1/2. While the trial is listed as active but not recruiting on clinicaltrials.gov, Lilly confirmed the program discontinuation to FierceBiotech.
In August, another gene therapy, LY3884961, was discontinued in Gaucher disease type 1, a lysosomal storage disorder, because it didn’t meet the company’s bar.
These issues reflect some of the broader challenges facing the field. Cell and gene therapies, in particular, can be difficult to develop. One industry report found that largely because of their biological complexity, 43% of cell and gene therapy programs experienced clinical development disruptions, compared with 29% for monoclonal antibodies. The largest share of those disruptions, 17%, was related to efficacy.
Still, the Gaucher disease discontinuation wasn’t a death knell for the drug. Lilly is also pursuing LY3884961 for Parkinson’s disease. And it has other investigational gene therapies in the clinic including a phase 3 option for hearing loss caused by OTOF gene mutations, and an AIPL1-related treatment for an inherited type of retinal dystrophy.
Setbacks in autoimmune and more
Lilly has also pulled back on programs outside of gene therapy, including an autoimmune anti-CD19 antibody, LY3541860, which it was testing in multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. The drug wasn’t effective enough in patients with either condition to continue, according to the company.
Even so, immunology remains a priority and Lilly has several other treatments in the works for diseases such as psoriasis and hidradenitis suppurativa. In October, the company finalized its acquisition of Merida Biosciences, a deal that included up to $2.87 billion in upfront and potential milestone payments. The biotech gave Lilly access to its precision therapies for serious autoimmune and allergic diseases, including its lead asset MER511 for Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease.
Lilly has reportedly axed a phase 1/2 radioligand therapy, AC-225-PSMA-62, in prostate cancer.
The company also recently nixed a phase 2 program in Alzheimer’s disease for a candidate called mevidalen. In its recent third quarter report, Lilly listed the asset, which suffered a clinical setback in Lewy body dementia in 2021, as “removed from pipeline.”
And while Lilly has a golden touch in obesity drugs, not all of its ventures in this area have been successful. The company terminated an early-stage obesity drug, LY4064912, after it fell short of expectations in a small phase 1 trial.
