Who is winning the GLP-1 race?

It’s safe to say that investors are no longer as impressed by the massive sales drugmakers are raking in off blockbuster GLP-1 shots currently on the market — they’re thinking about what's coming next.

For Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, a stock rally or dip is now more likely to be triggered by trial results for the new GLP-1 drugs in their pipeline than strong sales numbers. They’re also facing competition from new entrants, like Amgen and Viking Therapeutics, that are developing their own weight-loss medications.

There are a number of new drugs chugging their way through clinical trials. Several of them are once-daily pills as opposed to weekly injections. While pills tend to be less effective than shots, they are less expensive to manufacture than prefilled injection pens and are more inviting to squeamish patients.

Generally speaking: a drugmaker identifies a molecule that could treat certain condition(s), then that treatment goes through three phases of trials before being submitted to regulators for approval. During trials, drugmakers tend to refer to the treatment by the name of the molecule (e.g. semaglutide) and later give it a fun brand name (e.g. Ozempic).

But it’s a lot to keep track of. Here is our tally: