by Maggie Fick

LONDON (Reuters) – Drugmaker Novo Nordisk announced research partnerships with two U.S. biotechnology companies on Thursday, seeking to stay ahead in the big pharmaceutical companies’ race for more weight loss treatments.

Novo Nordisk, a Danish drugmaker whose share price rose 49% last year due to high demand for its new weight-loss drug Wegovy, said partnerships with Omega Therapeutics and Cellarity could lead to new treatments for people with obesity and a type of liver disease known as MASH.

The two separate collaborations are the first announced under a framework agreement signed in 2022 with Flagship Pioneering, a US investment company specializing in life sciences.

Both Omega and Cellarity are owned by Flagship. These companies will jointly carry out drug development in pre-clinical trials with Novo Nordisk. Then Novo Nordisk can move on to clinical studies, the company said in a statement.

Under the terms of the respective agreements, Novo Nordisk will reimburse research and development (R&D) costs. Each agreement may provide for up to $532 million in upfront, development and commercial milestone payments, as well as tiered royalties on net annual sales of a licensed product, which will be shared between the respective companies and Flagship.

Uli Stilz, vice president of Novo Nordisk’s Bio Innovation Hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Reuters the project will enable innovations that neither the lab nor other companies could achieve alone.

This research will be carried out alongside the group’s more advanced clinical collaborations and the acquisition of other companies through complementary agreements which have increased in the last year.

(Reporting Maggie Fick; Nathan Vifflin, editing by Kate Entringer)

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