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 agreement worth up to $1.4 billion with Novo Nordisk to develop oral therapies for cardiometabolic diseases, 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.

• Novo said it launched the world's ‌first oral GLP-1 ‌medicines for ⁠type 2 diabetes and weight loss based on the so-called SNAC technology, which helps with the absorption of peptide drugs when taken orally.

• 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 and ​Diti Pujara)

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