The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker last month placed a $2 billion bet by licensing an experimental pill from China's Eccogene that it believes could cause fewer side effects than current injectable weight-loss treatments. AstraZeneca was "a few years behind" the runaway success of Novo and Lilly's drugs and was "working on the next wave of products", CEO Pascal Soriot told Reuters last month. The company is focusing on overweight population with risk factors like hypertension and kidney disease as opposed to a cosmetic market.