Septerna and Novo Nordisk to collaborate on oral obesity and other cardiometabolic diseases

In a further bid to expand its already lucrative portfolio of metabolic and obesity medicines, Denmark’s Novo Nordisk (NOV: N) has entered into an exclusive global collaboration and license agreement with USA-based Septerna (Nasdaq: SEPN) to discover, develop and commercialize oral small molecule medicines for obesity, type 2 diabetes and other cardiometabolic diseases.

The companies will initially commence four development programmes for potential small molecule therapies directed to one or more select G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) targets, including the GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors.

“Novo Nordisk has a rich history of innovation in obesity and diabetes. We are building on our scientific leadership in this space and developing a broad pipeline across various targets and modalities, including peptides and small molecules. Leveraging different modalities creates important optionality in our pipeline in terms of potential targets, dosing regimens and scalability,” said Marcus Schindler, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Novo Nordisk, adding: “Septerna has demonstrated strong capabilities in GPCR drug discovery, and we are excited about the opportunity to develop oral small molecule medicines directed at multiple targets.”