Novo Nordisk Companions With Seattle Biopharm to Analysis, Develop Weight problems Therapies

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Seattle-based biopharmaceutical company in clinical stage Lumen Life Sciences team up with Novo Nordisk Exploring research and development opportunities in the field of obesity, among other metabolic diseases.

The collaboration will leverage Lumen’s drug development and manufacturing platform and Novo Nordisk’s experience with R&D activities in this area. Financial details of the collaboration have not yet been announced.

In a statement on the joint venture, Lumen CEO Brian Finrow said the collaboration collides the best of two worlds: “Lumen’s expertise in large-scale, affordable manufacturing of orally administered biological drugs and Novo Nordisk’s expertise in clinical development and commercialization of Treatments “for cardiovascular diseases.”

According to Lumen, the collaboration builds on previous research supporting the diversity of certain biological aspects “found in the gastrointestinal tract that can potentially be modulated with therapeutic proteins.”

In particular, the company’s spirulina-based drug development environment reportedly enables the scalable and cost-effective potential manufacturing of orally administered biological drugs typical of smaller molecule therapies.

The first phase of the R&D collaboration between Lumen and Novo Nordisk is expected to last about a year. The two companies plan to work together during this time to develop and evaluate the bioactivity of metabolically relevant molecules produced and released in spirulina in obesity and other metabolic diseases.

Striving to further its weight management success, Novo Nordisk builds on the high from the recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) victory for Wegovy (self-injection of 2.4 mg semaglutide once a week). Approved last week, this therapy is the first and currently only FDA-approved once-weekly GLP-1 receptor agonist for weight management purposes.

“Wegovy’s approval in the US brings great promise to obese people,” said Martin Holst Lange, executive vice president of Novo Nordisk Development in Denmark. “Despite the best efforts to lose weight, many people with obesity have difficulty achieving and maintaining weight loss because physiological responses that favor weight gain favor weight gain. The unprecedented weight loss for an anti-obesity drug marks a new era in obesity treatment and we now look forward to making Wegovy available to people with obesity in the United States. “

In the approval-supported STEP IIIa clinical trial, patients receiving Wegovy lost an average of 17 to 18% of their body weight. On average, this meant a loss of about 34 pounds during the study. Weight loss was sustained for a period of 68 weeks. Most of the patients in the late STEP study gradually lost weight for up to 16 months, but then reached a plateau. The placebo group, on the other hand, only lost an average of six pounds during the study.

Novo Nordisk announced that it will launch Wegovy in the US this month. Regulatory authorities in the European Union and other countries are currently reviewing the drug for possible approval in these regions.

While the price of the drug has not yet been clarified, Novo Nordisk has already announced that Wegovy will have a price similar to that of another injectable weight loss drug, Saxenda, which has been around for about 11 years. For uninsured patients, Saxenda costs more than $ 1,300 per month.