National Medical Products Administration (NMPA)
Is Retatrutide legal in China?
Not approvedNot approved in China or anywhere else; only trial-stage filings exist.
Not approved as a medicine here.
CDE's public register shows seven Lilly clinical-trial-stage records for LY3437943 (2021 to April 2023) and five more import clinical-trial applications for retatrutide injection accepted on 2025-09-12, and a phase 1 study in Chinese participants was completed in 2023. We found no marketing application. Lilly stated on 2026-08-12 that no medicine containing retatrutide has been approved for human use by any regulator. Anything sold in China as retatrutide would be an unapproved drug under Article 98 of the Drug Administration Law.
Last verified 2026-09-29 · how we verify
Retatrutide elsewhere
Sources (4)
- 01CDE public register of accepted drug applications (受理品种目录浏览)Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE), NMPA · 2026-09-29 · accessed 2026-09-29
- 02A study of LY3437943 (retatrutide) in Chinese participants with obesity or overweight (NCT05548231)U.S. National Library of Medicine (ClinicalTrials.gov) · 2022-10 · accessed 2026-09-29
- 03Lilly calls on online platforms, payment companies and regulators to shut down the illegal retatrutide black marketPR Newswire (Eli Lilly and Company) · 2026-08-12 · accessed 2026-09-29
- 04Drug Administration Law of the PRC (中华人民共和国药品管理法)National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) · 2019-08-26 · accessed 2026-09-29