Novo Nordisk is pairing up with another Flagship-founded biotech to create new obesity medications, and GLP-1 remains in the frame.
The Danish pharma giant, which leads the GLP-1 field alongside Eli Lilly, will tap into the “molecular mimicry” work at Metaphore Biotechnologies to make one or two obesity management therapeutics, the companies said Thursday morning.
Novo will deliver up to $600 million in upfront payments and biobucks to Metaphore and Flagship’s Pioneering Medicines. Novo and Pioneering Medicines have a broad relationship that also includes an obesity pact with Omega Therapeutics.
The drug giant will also reimburse R&D costs and help bankroll Metaphore in a future fundraising round, the companies said. If Novo chooses to move forward with the programs, it will lead clinical trials.
Flagship launched Metaphore during this time last year with an initial $50 million to create autoimmune and immunology drugs by using machine learning to map out the important features of molecular interactions. It’s measured thousands of “near identical” protein-protein interactions to train machine learning models, CEO Lovisa Afzelius told Endpoints News.
Lovisa Afzelius“We are using mimicry, one of the oldest tricks of nature, of how we can actually identify what are the core features, what are the core pharmacophore, that are required in order to drive the function that we are after,” Afzelius said.
As Novo expands the class’ scope to include cardio benefits, with an FDA approval in March, it is also looking at creating next-generation treatments by making a few acquisitions in the field (for Inversago Pharma and Embark Biotech) and betting genetic medicines can play a role, too.
With Metaphore, Novo hopes to make multitarget antibody-based treatments. While Novo’s Wegovy goes after GLP-1, other drugs on the market and those in earlier stages of development are multitargeted. Lilly’s drug, Zepbound, goes after GLP-1 and GIP. Lilly’s also working on retatrutide, a three-target medicine referred to as the “Triple G” candidate. Other drug developers are eyeing multitarget approaches as well. Investors are quite interested.
Uli StilzNovo plans to still tap into the appetite-suppressing GLP-1 receptor but will also go after additional “related receptors” with Metaphore, said Uli Stilz, head of the Novo Nordisk Bio Innovation Hub.
“There’s about a billion people living with obesity, so there’s a continuous need for innovation to address unmet medical need, and so that’s why we feel like working together with Metaphore, we actually can continue to innovate in the GLP-1 space and come to a next-generation therapeutic,” Stilz said in an interview.
With the next generation of GLP-1s, durability, convenience and scalability will be key questions, Stilz said. The goal is to create long-acting treatments that require less frequent dosing than current options, he said.