Roche extends China deal streak with $1B pact for RNAi obesity drug

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Dive Brief:

• Roche is padding its pipeline of obesity drugs, signing a deal with China-based Rona Therapeutics on Thursday for an experimental medicine aimed at an increasingly popular metabolic target.
• Per deal terms, Roche will pay Rona $100 million for full ownership of the drug, an RNA interference medicine aimed at a protein called ALK7. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant could end up paying Rona just over $1 billion overall should the therapy hit an array of development, regulatory and commercial goals. Rona is eligible for sales royalties, too.
• The deal is Roche’s fifth with a China-based drugmaker since the end of August and 10th since the beginning of 2025, the most among its pharmaceutical peers, according to BioPharma Dive data. The Rona drug will join five other experimental obesity medicines in Roche’s pipeline, three of which it gained by acquiring Carmot Therapeutics in 2023. 

Dive Insight:

Despite Eli Lilly and Novo’s substantial lead in the market for obesity drugs, Roche remains committed to gaining a foothold. The Carmot purchase handed Roche the kind of “incretin” drugs made popular by Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo’s Wegovy. A licensing pact with Zealand Pharma, meanwhile, gave Roche a drug that could prove more tolerable than existing medications.

The Rona alliance is focused on a different area of obesity drug research that’s also gaining traction. The strategy involves targeting ALK7, a cell surface receptor that’s frequently expressed in fat tissue and regulates lipid metabolism. Human studies have shown that people with reduced ALK7 activity have “favorable fat distribution and metabolic phenotypes,” making silencing its expression with a drug an attractive approach, Rona said in a statement.

Several companies are already working on similar medicines, with the goal of lowering levels of “visceral,” or harmful fat. These treatments could emerge as drugs to combine with incretin therapies, though research remains early. GSK licensed an ALK7-targeting agent from a China-based SiranBio earlier this year. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals have brought prospects into Phase 1 testing. And Wave Life Sciences has a different kind of RNAi medicine for obesity that targets the same pathway.

"Obesity is a complex chronic disease with significant unmet medical needs for new mechanisms that can improve the quality and durability of weight loss," said Stella Shi, CEO and founder of Rona, in the company’s statement. "ALK7 is a compelling obesity and metabolic disease target with the potential to directly address adipose tissue biology.”

Rona launched in 2022 with a $33 million Series A round supported by Lilly Asia Ventures, CMB International and others, and followed that up with a $35 million Series A+ round that also involved Lilly. The company licensed RNA technology from Sanofi in 2022 as well.