Two years since Novo Nordisk made a push into the ribonucleic acid space spearheaded by its acquisition of Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, the Danish drugmaker has announced a new collaboration to find ways to fine-tune RNA tech.
The partnership—the financial details of which were undisclosed—will see Novo Nordisk team up with Eleven Therapeutics to identify new molecules that promote the precise delivery of RNA-based therapies. The collaboration will be focused on cardiometabolic diseases and will make use of the biotech’s DELiveri platform.
Eleven has pitched the platform as a “game-changing” way to “overcome the many complex challenges that plague” drug developers as they try to deliver nucleic acid therapeutics. Specifically, DELiveri uses DNA-encoded libraries that harness AI to screen “vast numbers” of molecules to identify potential conjugates that can help deliver therapies into targeted cell types.
So far, the lack of such organ-specific delivery agents has held back the full potential of nucleic acid drugs in treating cardiometabolic diseases, Eleven explained in the release Monday. “This collaboration provides Novo Nordisk with exclusivity for specific cell types and applications associated with Eleven’s innovative DELiveri platform in a staged approach,” the England, U.S. and Israel-based biotech added.
Novo Nordisk’s RNA strategy was kick-started by its $3.3 billion buyout of RNAi partner Dicerna Pharmaceuticals in late 2021 as part of the Big Pharma’s search for new growth drivers. As well as gaining a clutch of kidney- and liver-focused candidates, Novo said at the time that it intended to apply the RNAi tech across all its therapy areas.
RNAi research was also singled out as one of the priority focus areas when Novo Nordisk announced plans in March this year to expand its R&D presence in Boston.
Uli Stilz, head of Novo Nordisk’s Bio Innovation Hub in Boston, said in today’s release that the research collaboration with Eleven “builds on Novo Nordisk’s commitment to advancing precision medicine and opens up the opportunity to learn from one another as we explore novel cell-specific targeting strategies.”
“With the combination of our joint team’s expertise and using Eleven’s DELiveri platform, we can potentially unlock transformative treatments for people living with cardiometabolic diseases,” Stilz added.