This week, we're replaying some of our favorite Forbes stories from 2025.

Today on Forbes, this pharma company is betting big on a Chinese OZempic rival.

In the summer of 2023, Dr. Amir Zamani, a 42-year-old Johns Hopkins-trained physician, who is a partner on Bain Capital's

Life Sciences team in Boston, was obsessed with obesity drugs.

OZempec, the blockbuster injectable for type 2 diabetes from Novo Nordisk, was taking America

by storm, on pace to generate some $14 billion in revenue that year

for the Danish pharmaceutical giant. Eli Lilly was nearing FDA approval for its similar

weight loss drug, Zepbound. Zamani eagerly wanted to find a competitor. He'd been reading

the early research for two years and spent months digging through

reams of data from dozens of companies.

Then, he struck gold in an unexpected place.

The portfolio of Jiangsu-Hunggrui pharmaceuticals, one of China's biggest pharmaceutical companies.

Showcased in the early clinical data before him was a potential next-generation injectable

weight loss therapy that, Lycosempic and Zepbound, targeted the blood sugar and appetite-regulating

hormone, GLP1.

He says, quote, it was like, wait a second, they're ahead of everybody else who's not

Novo or Lily.

Results from Phase 2 clinical trials in China ultimately showed 59% of participants

lost 20% or more of their body weight on an 8 milligram dose of the drug in 36 weeks,

and side effects were mild.

If those results hold, the drug could be especially useful for severely obese

patients who need to lose more weight than they can on currently available medications. Better yet,

...