This unlikely duo is developing a weight-loss pill. Big Pharma is obsessed.

The Metsera founders had Pfizer and Novo Nordisk vying for their company-the second time striking deal gold

- Lauren Thomas & Peter Loftus

Long before he found himself in the middle of a multibillion-dollar takeover battle for a coveted new weight-loss drug, Whit Bernard was a music nerd. He spent two years studying the role of musical activity in the nonviolent anti-Soviet uprisings of the Baltic States during the Perestroika era, publishing his research in English and Latvian.

After he got tired of working at a music nonprofit in Brooklyn, N.Y., he went to business school and became a consultant at McKinsey & Co.

His client was Clive Meanwell, a cancer researcher turned pharmaceutical executive who hired McKinsey to shore up costs and make other changes at his biotech Medicines Co.

The two hit it off, and Bernard left McKinsey to become Meanwell's head of business development. They agreed to sell Medicines to Novartis for almost $10 billion in 2019, and looked to start another company.

Meanwell did what he does best-find the next big thing in medicine by looking for the biggest afflictions facing the most patients. Weight-loss drugs, he bet.

Now, Bernard, 41, and Meanwell, 68, are about to pull off a big sale again.

Pfizer on Friday said it had agreed to buy Metsera in a deal that could be worth more than $10 billion. Metsera's stable of at least eight potential new drugs promises Pfizer a foothold in a global weight-loss market that analysts project will surpass $100 billion in 2030.

The two stand to profit big from a transaction. Their firm Population Health Partners owns roughly 12% of Metsera shares, which would net it over $1 billion, assuming the final deal values Metsera at $10 billion or more.

"Hundreds of millions of people who need these drugs are not getting anywhere near them," Meanwell said on a Stat News podcast last month about weight-loss medicines.