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

By Siddhi Mahatole

Sept 17 (Reuters) - 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)