Novo, Orbis sign up to $1.4 billion deal to develop oral drugs

Sept 17 — Orbis Medicines said on Thursday it had signed a drug discovery ​and licensing deal with Novo Nordisk worth up to $1.4 billion to develop oral therapies for cardiometabolic diseases that are traditionally treated ‌with injectable drugs.

Here are the details:

• The deal includes upfront and milestone payments to Orbis, ⁠as well as tiered royalties on ​future product sales.

• Danish drugmaker Novo ⁠will also make a strategic investment in Orbis, the privately held ‌company said.

• Orbis and ‌Novo declined to disclose the investment size and the breakdown ⁠of the potential $1.4 billion deal.

• The multi-target ⁠collaboration will use Orbis' AI-enabled nGen platform to discover macrocycles, a class of molecules that could be used to turn treatments traditionally delivered by injection into oral form.

• The ring-shaped macrocycles can potentially address disease targets that are difficult for conventional small-molecule drugs to ‌reach.

• Orbis CEO Morten Graugaard said in an ​interview that its synthetic macrocycles had achieved up to 18% oral bioavailability, a measure of how much of a swallowed drug reaches the bloodstream, in preclinical studies.

• "Together with Novo, we have an opportunity to unlock a new generation of oral medicines for cardiometabolic diseases and demonstrate the transformative potential of AI-enabled macrocycle drug discovery," Graugaard said.

• A ​Novo spokesperson said the collaboration builds on SNAC, its oral peptide absorption technology ‌acquired along with ‌U.S. drug ⁠delivery company Emisphere Technologies in 2020 and developed since.

• "We continue to drive innovation in this area through our internal research and in collaborations with other companies," the spokesperson said.

• Johnson & Johnson won U.S. approval in March ‌for Icotyde, an oral macrocyclic ​peptide for plaque psoriasis, and Merck ‌secured approval in July ⁠for Lipfendra, an ​oral macrocyclic peptide that lowers cholesterol.

(Reporting by Siddhi Mahatole in Bengaluru; Editing by ​Sahal Muhammed)

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