The KBP Biosciences drug Novo Nordisk is acquiring has reached Phase 3 testing as a potential treatment for uncontrolled hypertension and advanced chronic kidney disease. It’s the latest in a string of business deals aimed at expanding the Novo Nordisk pipeline beyond diabetes. By FRANK VINLUAN Novo Nordisk has again turned to dealmaking to expand its pipeline, but rather than adding yet another weight loss drug prospect the company is acquiring a molecule that’s a potential treatment for uncontrolled hypertension and chronic kidney disease. The Danish pharmaceutical giant has agreed to buy ocedurenone, a drug that KBP Biosciences has advanced to Phase 3 testing. Specific financial details, such as an upfront payment and milestones, were not disclosed Monday, but Novo Nordisk said it could end up paying out up to $1.3 billion. The target of KBP’s drug is the mineralocorticoid receptor, whose overactivation is associated with hypertension and chronic kidney ...
The popular diabetes med Ozempic and its sister weight-loss drug Wegovy are boosting Novo Nordisk to new highs again and again. The Danish company now expects full-year sales to grow between 32% and 38% at constant exchange rates. The new projection, released on Friday, represents a 5-percentage-point increase on both ends of the range from an August estimate, which itself was 3 percentage points higher than a previous forecast from April. Novo’s share price at one point traded at around $104 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, a new all-time high. Huge demand for Ozempic—which is often used off-label to treat obesity—plus new discount adjustments for Ozempic and Wegovy in the U.S. drove the updated sales outlook, Novo explained in a release. Novo on Friday also dialed up its estimated profit growth rate by 9 percentage points to a range of 40% to 46%. The company released the ...
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 ...
Collaboration based on Valo’s large human dataset and computation powered by artificial intelligence. Image Credit: Adobe Stock Images/Shutter2U Novo Nordisk and Valo Health revealed that they have struck a deal to discover and develop novel treatments for cardiometabolic diseases based on Valo’s large human dataset and computation powered by artificial intelligence (AI). According to Novo Nordisk, this will include access to real-world patient data, AI-enabled small molecule discovery and Biowire human tissue modeling platform designed to speed up the discovery and development process. As per terms of the deal, Valo will receive an upfront payment and a potential near-term milestone payment of $60 million, with the potential to earn additional milestone payments up to $2.7 billion, plus R&D funding and potential royalty payments. “Artificial Intelligence and machine learning hold the promise to positively impact drug discovery and development, in particular enabling our vision of leveraging human datasets early in the ...
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 ...
Go to Page Go
your submission has already been received.
OK
Please enter a valid Email address!
Submit
The most relevant industry news & insight will be sent to you every two weeks.