REVIEW article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Obesity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1630199
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Combination Therapies for Effective Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome ManagementView all articles
A glimpse into the pipeline of anti-obesity medication development: combining multiple receptor pathways
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of California San Diego Department of Medicine, San Diego, United States
- 2saint Louis university school of medicine, saint louis, United States
- 3university of california san diego school of medicine, san diego, United States
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Obesity has been historically a stubborn chronic metabolic disease, resistant to multiple therapeutic modalities. Although effective in the short-term for some people, lifestyle interventions have proven difficult to maintain in the long-term. Metabolic bariatric surgery is the most effective treatment for durable weight loss and improvement of obesity-related conditions but is invasive and vastly underutilized. For decades, patients and clinicians confronted a wide gap between lifestyle modification and bariatric procedures. Anti-obesity pharmacotherapy was plagued by either safety concerns or very modest effectiveness. Recently, the availability of highly effective medications has given patients living with obesity hope for better health. These advances represent a culmination of many years of scientific progress regarding our understanding of human weight regulation and the beginning of a new era in treating metabolic diseases. In fact, many molecules are under investigation for obesity therapy, some with novel mechanisms. Since data on these putative agents are appearing at accelerated speed, the aim of this review is to provide an updated synopsis of emerging agents, highlighting the correlation between efficacy and combination strategies.
Keywords: Obesity, Anti-obesity pharmacotherapy, emerging therapies, obesity drugdevelopment, GLP-1 receptor agonists, combination therapy
Received: 17 May 2025; Accepted: 22 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Park, Kim, Raygani and Grunvald. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eduardo Grunvald, University of California San Diego Department of Medicine, San Diego, United States
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