The Novo Nordisk Foundation has announced that it has committed up to €127m in funding to develop and manufacture a new cell therapy facility, Cellerator, in Denmark, to help fight chronic diseases. The new Novo Nordisk Foundation, Cellerator, will be used for the final development steps of animal research and upscaling new cell therapies for testing in humans. This will help to accelerate treatments for people with diseases including chronic heart failure, Parkinson’s disease, kidney disease, type 1 diabetes and several forms of cancer. Cell therapies work by transplanting living cells into patients to treat diseases. It’s estimated that one in three adults suffers from multiple chronic conditions. In the US alone, it’s been calculated that out of 58 million deaths in 2005, chronic disease was responsible for 35 million. The funding follows a report prepared for the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, which came to the conclusion ...
Novo Nordisk has announced that it has entered into a partnership with Valo Health, worth up to $60m, to discover and develop new treatments for cardiometabolic diseases. The collaboration aims to utilise Valo’s Opal Computational Platform and real-world patient dataset, as well as its artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled small molecule discovery and its human tissue modelling platform, Biowire, to accelerate discovery and development. The Opal Computational Platform is an integrated, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform that is designed to enable a fully integrated and efficient approach for targeting and advancing candidates to regulatory approval. As part of the agreement, Valo will receive an upfront payment and a potential near-term milestone payment of $60m, as well as milestone payments for up to 11 programmes totalling up to $2.7 billion, plus research and development funding and potential royalty payments, said Novo Nordisk. Valo will enable the identification and validation of novel druggable ...
Novo Nordisk and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have announced a new research alliance to address ‘critical unmet clinical needs’ in diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases. The collaboration aims to identify disease-modifying interventions to improve the standards of care for people living with type 2 diabetes and cardiac fibrosis. The Novo side of the collaboration is secured through the Novo Nordisk Bio Innovation Hub, a research and development unit designed for life sciences innovation and focused on cardiometabolic, rare blood and rare endocrine disorders. Utilising state-of-the-art genetics and genomics methods, the collaboration aims to interrogate subtypes of diabetes. Along with the Broad’s Center for the Development of Therapeutics, using large-scale cell screens, the research will focus on the relationships between genes and pathways that could be therapeutic targets. Type 2 diabetes affects more than 37 million people in the US. Scarring of the heart, or cardiac fibrosis, is common ...
Novo Nordisk has engaged Thermo Fisher as a contract manufacturer to produce the weight-loss drug, Wegovy (semaglutide), Reuters reported, citing a source with knowledge of the matter. ThermoFisher is carrying out the filling of the Wegovy injection pens at its plant in Greenville, North Carolina, the source added. The publication quoted Novo Nordisk chief financial officer Karsten Munk Knudsen as saying in May 2023 that the company had hired a second contract manufacturer in the US, without revealing its identity. A spokesperson from Novo Nordisk declined to comment on the latest development. The company is currently working on increasing the drug output to meet the rising demand in the US, and due to manufacturing issues at a Catalent-operated plant in Brussels, Belgium. Catalent was engaged by Novo Nordisk as the first contract manufacturer for Wegovy production. In July 2023, the Brussels factory filling self-injection pens for Wegovy violated US sterile-safety ...
Danish pharma company Novo Nordisk has brought in Thermo Fisher Scientific as a second manufacturer as demand for its weight-loss drug Wegovy (semaglutide) soars and amid Catalent’s production problems at a factory in Brussels, Belgium, according to reporting Wednesday by Reuters. Thermo Fisher is reportedly filling Wegovy injection pens at its factory in Greenville, NC through its CDMO subsidiary Patheon. Reuters’ source declined to be named as the information was confidential, according to the news agency, which initially reported back in May that Novo had brought on a second, then-unnamed manufacturer. The news comes after reports of difficulties with Catalent, the first manufacturer contracted by Novo to produce Wegovy. Deliveries were halted in late 2021 only months after the drug’s launch, when the FDA found issues at the Brussels syringe-filling facility. The facility was shut down again in 2022 after another inspection by the regulator found lapses. Novo ended up ...
Amongst fierce competition in the obesity space, Novo Nordisk has spent $1bn to acquire Inversago Pharma to shore up its weight loss treatment portfolio. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of 2023 and will hit the billion-dollar mark, subject to developmental and commercial milestones. The deal, which comes a month after Eli Lilly acquired Versanis and its lead weight loss candidate, bimagrumab, in a $1.9bn deal, will include Inversago’s lead asset INV-202, an oral cannabinoid receptor type-1 (CB1) inverse agonist. Novo Nordisk said it intends to use the candidate for patients with obesity and obesity-related complications. Canada-based Inversago demonstrated the weight loss potential of the candidate in a Phase Ia trial by blocking the CB1 receptor, which plays an important role in appetite regulation and metabolism. INV-202 is currently in a Phase II trial for diabetic kidney disease (NCT05514548). Prior to the 10 August announcement, Novo ...
Novo Nordisk has been riding the momentum of weight loss drug Wegovy ever since it stormed onto the market in 2021, creating widespread hype and even some supply shortfalls. But, now, a cardio outcomes trial could seriously change the game for the burgeoning medicine. In a large phase 3 trial, the drug cut the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events by 20% compared with placebo and standard of care, Novo said Tuesday. Specifically, investigators measured Wegovy’s 2.4-mg dose for its ability to cut the risk of a cardio death, heart attack or stroke. The trial enrolled 17,604 people and tested the drug for up to five years in people 45 and older who were overweight or obese and who had established cardiovascular disease. To be eligible for the trial, patients had to have had no history of diabetes. Based on the trial win, Novo Nordisk said it expects to seek ...
Pictured: Novo Nordisk building in California/iStock, hapabapa Thursday, Novo Nordisk filed legal complaints against three pharmacies in Florida and one in Tennessee for allegedly selling products that contain semaglutide, the active compound in the company’s best-selling weight-loss and diabetes drugs Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus, Bloomberg reported. Novo filed three separate lawsuits in Florida federal court, targeting three compounding pharmacies: WellHealth, TruLife Pharmacy and Brooksville Pharmaceuticals. A fourth lawsuit was filed in Tennessee against DCA Pharmacy. The Danish drugmaker is asking the courts to block these pharmacies from marketing their semaglutide-containing products and is seeking unspecified financial damages. This latest round of lawsuits comes two weeks after Novo sent out a barrage of legal complaints against wellness and weight loss clinics, medical spas and other compounding pharmacies, also claiming that these businesses were selling products containing semaglutide. Semaglutide is a peptide that mimics the GLP-1 hormone to active its counterpart receptor. In turn, this induces the pancreas to secrete ...
As demand skyrockets for GLP-1 drugs that can trigger significant weight loss, unauthorized versions of the treatments have started to fill pharmacies. In late May, the FDA warned of illegal knockoffs of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy. Now, five weeks later, the Danish company has filed its second wave of lawsuits against pharmacies in the U.S. that are producing the copycats. Thursday, in federal courts in Florida and Tennessee, the company accused four companies of making compounded versions of its products that are not approved by the FDA. “Testing new drugs and obtaining the regularly acquired regulatory approval to sell them are time-consuming and very costly,” Novo said in its complaints. “Ignoring drug-approval requirements provides defendant an unfair competitive advantage over pharmaceutical manufacturers like Novo Nordisk. Worse, it puts patients at risk by exposing them to drugs that have not been shown to be safe or effective.” The defendants are compounding ...
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