Novo Nordisk joins protein degradation race in $1.4B+ deal with Neomorph

2024-02-27

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Novo Nordisk signed its first protein degradation deal Monday and is looking to take the molecular glue modality – most often used in oncology – into the cardiometabolic and rare disease spaces. The Dutch drugmaker partnered with Neomorph in a multi-target deal worth $1.46 billion in biobucks.

Neomorph will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and R&D funding, and is eligible for near-term, clinical, commercial, and sales milestones, plus tiered royalties.

Under the deal – the recently launched biotech’s first – Neomorph will lead discovery and preclinical activities against selected targets, and Novo Nordisk will have the right to exclusively pursue further clinical development and commercialization of the compounds.

Neomorph, created by Deerfield Management company, debuted in 2020 with a $109-million series A and a platform to develop the next-generation of protein degraders, called “molecular glue” drugs.

Protein degraders were developed as a way to target and destroy so-called “undruggable” proteins that lack binding pockets suitable for small molecules, or have limited binding efficacy.

However, E3 ubiquitin ligase-triggering protein degraders – which make up the bulk of programmes in the clinic – still require a druggable binding pocket on the target protein, whereas molecular glue drugs – like thalidomide and indisulam – are able to bypass this requirement. For more, see Spotlight On: Targeted protein degradation grows up.

Degradation momentum

Novo’s is the second biopharma bet on molecular glues this month, and it’s worth twice as much as the preceding deal.

Bristol Myers Squibb’s partnership with VantAI to use the latter’s generative AI platform to design molecular glues could be worth as much as $674 million. The deal is at least the sixth in the past two years for the pharma, the current leader in number of protein degradation deals. For more, see Spotlight On: BMS leads big pharma in protein degradation deals.

Also making waves in degradation is Firefly Bio, which emerged from stealth this month with $94 million and a platform to develop degrader-antibody conjugates (DACs), which use antibodies as a homing mechanism to more specifically deliver the degrader component.

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