Shares of health care companies were among the few winning sectors Monday as the broader market posted losses.

Roche Holding said it stopped work on one of its obesity-drug candidates, after clinical-trial data suggested the medicine wouldn't hit internal targets. The Swiss drugmaker said it returned rights to the medicine, emugrobart, to its majority-owned business Chugai Pharmaceutical which originally discovered the drug and licensed it to Roche. "We have made the decision to discontinue development," Roche's pharmaceuticals chief executive, Teresa Graham, said at an event with investors in London on Monday. "We are returning that molecule to Chugai, and Chugai is looking to further development in [spinal muscular atrophy] as well as considering potential outlicensing opportunities."