Novo Nordisk and Valo Health have expanded their agreement to discover and develop new treatments for type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease (CVD), with the deal now worth $4.6bn.
The announcement follows the companies’ 2023 agreement for the development of up to 11 drug programmes, primarily focused on CVD.
Under the original deal, Valo received $60m upfront and was eligible to receive up to $2.7bn in milestone payments, as well as research and development (R&D) funding and potential royalties.
Valo is now in line for an additional $190m in near-term payments and could receive milestone payments for up to 20 drug programmes, totalling approximately $4.6bn, plus R&D funding and potential royalties.
The collaboration has already led to the identification of several new targets that could “form the basis” of differentiated cardiometabolic drug programmes, the companies said, adding that they are “actively working” on multiple small molecule preclinical drug discovery programmes.
Marcus Schindler, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Novo Nordisk, said: “We are very pleased with the progress we have made together with Valo during the first year of our collaboration, and we are excited to expand the scope to put a stronger focus on obesity and type 2 diabetes in addition to CVD.”
The partners will continue to use Valo’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Opal computational platform, which is designed to enable a fully integrated approach for targeting and advancing product candidates, from understanding the underlying disease to regulatory approval.
Brian Alexander, chief executive officer of Valo and chief executive officer-partner, Flagship Pioneering, said: “The partnership fully leverages the Opal computational platform by seeking to identify novel therapeutic targets in large real-world patient datasets, validate those targets using human preclinical models, and develop therapeutics against those targets with human-centric AI small molecule design.”
The expansion comes two months after Novo partnered with Ascendis Pharma to develop therapies for metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, including a once-monthly GLP-1 receptor agonist that will initially target type 2 diabetes and obesity.
The company also entered into a multi-year partnership with NanoVation Therapeutics in September to advance genetic medicines for cardiometabolic and rare diseases.