Novo Nordisk doubles down on R&D pact with Ginkgo Bioworks

10 Apr 2024
firstwordpharma.com
Acquisition
Novo Nordisk has expanded its partnership with synthetic biology service provider Ginkgo Bioworks to improve production of its medicines for serious chronic diseases, including diabetes and obesity. The initial plan for the framework agreement spans five years.
Under the "flexible" partnership announced Wednesday, Ginkgo said the companies plan to collaborate on several early pipeline projects and on engineering scalable manufacturing solutions across the Danish drugmaker's portfolio.
The companies first teamed up in 2022 to create new expression hosts for pharmaceutical products. The project moved into the development phase last year.
Marcus Schindler, Novo's chief scientific officer, said, "We look forward to leveraging GinkgoGinkgo's synthetic biology platform across our R&D pipeline, from discovery through new ways of manufacturing, in this broader strategic partnership."
The expanded deal comes as Novo tries to satisfy surging demand for its GLP-1 products Wegovy (semaglutide) and Ozempic (semaglutide), which are approved to treat obesity and diabetes, respectively. In February, it paid $11 billion upfront to buy three of Catalent's fill-finish sites from its parent organisation, Novo Holdings, which itself spent $16.5 billion to acquire the  CDMO. For more, see No 'easy way forward' as Novo-Catalent deal could exacerbate Lilly’s manufacturing woes.
Meanwhile, Ginkgo has been busy topping up its collection of cell-and-gene tools, its most recent acquisition being Modulus Therapeutics' library of switch receptors and CARs. Earlier this year, it also gained access to ProteoNic's vector production platform; an in silico suite for construct characterisation, simulation, and design optimisation by Form Bio; and Patch Biosciences' AI toolkit for DNA sequence design.
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