① Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk has signed a research cooperation agreement with the American biotech company Metaphore to jointly develop the next generation of diet pills; ② The treatment of the newly developed diet pills will be long-term, that is, patients will not need frequent medication; ③ The total amount of this cooperation is as high as 600 million US dollars, and Novo Nordisk promised to participate in Metaphore's future financing.
Financial Services Association, May 10 (Editor Zhou Ziyi) Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk (Novo Nordisk) signed a research cooperation agreement with American biotech company Metaphore this Thursday (May 9) to jointly develop next-generation weight loss drugs.
Novo Nordisk is trying to expand beyond its blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy (simeglutide). Currently, at least eight other drugs to treat obesity are in its R&D pipeline.
The two companies said the collaboration will use Metaphore's technology platform to develop two treatments to treat obesity.
Longer lasting weight loss medicine
Metaphore has a new therapy that combines machine learning and molecular simulation design. This biotechnology platform is called MIMIC.
MIMIC will focus its development on pharmacophore, which is a chemical combination code that guides interactions between molecules and stimulates downstream behavior.
MIMIC aims to systematically separate pharmacodynamics with single amino acid resolution, design molecular simulators, and optimize the therapeutic properties of molecules, including function, specificity, selectivity, and multi-targeting.
Speaking about the MiMIC platform, Dr. Uli Stilz, head of Novo Nordisk's BioInnovation Center, said, “We haven't seen a similar situation anywhere else.” He added that large pharmaceutical companies believe MIMIC is in a unique position to address the unmet needs of obese patients.
The collaboration will focus on developing treatments using GLP-1R and related biology. These treatments are scalable and effective for a longer period of time, meaning patients may not need frequent dosing.
Stilz said, “Today's diet pill sessions are either once a day or once a week — we want to go beyond once a week.”
A $600 million partnership
After Novo Nordisk released the blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy to seize a larger market share, the company also hopes to firmly grasp the future diet medicine market and continue to lay out its layout. According to previous estimates by many investment banks, the size of the global diet pills market is expected to reach at least 100 billion US dollars by the end of this decade.
In January of this year, Novo Nordisk announced research collaborations with two biotech companies Omega Therapeutics and Cellarity. Both companies were founded by the US investment company Flagship Pioneering.
Metaphore is also a Flagship company.
Under the terms of the deal, Novo Nordisk may pay up to $600 million to Metaphore and Flagship's research and partnership division Pioneering Medicines, including prepayments, development and commercial milestone payments, and promise to license royalties for the annual net sales of its products.
Additionally, Novo Nordisk will participate in Metaphore's future funding round, but Metaphore co-founder and CEO Lovisa Afzelius did not disclose a schedule for future financing. The biotech company initially received $50 million in funding from Flagship.