AstraZeneca pays $185M upfront to reenter oral obesity gold rush, drops phase 2 sickle cell drug

AstraZeneca is buying its way back into the obesity drug gold rush. Months after dropping its own oral GLP-1 agonist, the Big Pharma has agreed to pay Eccogene $185 million for a similar small molecule that it believes can stake a claim to a market targeted by Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer and others.