Variant Bio Partners with Novo Nordisk to Discover Novel Targets for Metabolic Disease
Variant Bio, a leading genomics-driven drug discovery company, announced today it is entering a new, multi-year research collaboration with pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk. The partnership aims to discover and validate novel targets for the treatment of metabolic diseases. By leveraging human genetic evidence, the collaboration seeks to initiate new drug discovery programs with a focus on human-centric approaches. This strategic alliance highlights both companies’ commitment to advancing the treatment of metabolic disorders through innovative research and development.
Under the terms of the agreement, Novo Nordisk will provide Variant Bio with an upfront payment and additional near-term R&D funding, amounting to a total of up to $50 million. Additionally, Variant Bio may receive potential option and milestone payments for successful targets emerging from the collaboration. Consistent with Variant Bio’s long-term benefit-sharing program, the financial benefits of this partnership will extend to partner communities worldwide that contributed their data to genomic research.
David Moller, Chief Scientific Officer at Variant Bio, commented:
“Metabolic disease – including obesity – affects people all over the world, yet newer targets with genetic evidence are primarily based on studies with European-ancestry populations. As a result, there is still an unmet need in this space. We hope that a deeper understanding of the relationships between genetic variation and metabolic traits will yield novel targets and ultimately lead to better and more diverse treatment options for people around the globe.”
Bei Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Global Drug Discovery at Novo Nordisk, stated:
“Through our partnership with Variant Bio, we aspire to gain a more complete understanding of the genetic causes of metabolic disease. Having conducted over two dozen genomic research projects with diverse populations around the world, Variant Bio is well positioned to carry out genomic research on metabolic disease in places that have not yet been fully studied. We believe that the likelihood of discovering truly novel targets is higher because of the nature of these data. What is more, human genetic evidence should increase our odds of discovering and developing differentiated new therapies for metabolic diseases.”
The collaboration leverages Variant Bio’s innovative VB-Inference analysis platform to identify novel targets with strong genetic evidence and clear therapeutic hypotheses. VB-Inference maps the molecular mechanisms of disease by integrating whole genomes with deep phenotyping and rich multi-omic data using statistical genetics and machine learning. This mechanistic understanding has the potential to better inform drug discovery compared to genetic association studies alone and is made possible by extensive transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. The platform has enabled several new R&D programs within Variant Bio’s internal pipeline.
The multi-year target discovery collaboration announced today signals a new chapter of growth for Variant Bio. The strategic partnership with Novo Nordisk demonstrates the value of Variant Bio’s potential to enable the development of novel therapeutics based on results from its innovative genomic studies.
About Variant Bio
Variant Bio is developing life-saving therapies by studying the genes of people with exceptional health-related traits. By identifying communities with unique genetic architectures and outlier phenotypes, Variant Bio has identified novel human genetic evidence that is the basis for programs with breakthrough potential across multiple therapeutic areas. The company’s research is powered by its proprietary VB-Inference platform, which integrates across deep phenotyping and multi-omic data using statistical genetics and AI/ML approaches to identify and validate therapeutic targets. With ethics at its core, the company launched an unprecedented benefit-sharing program in 2020, in which it has pledged tangible benefits that directly impact the communities it partners with throughout the world. Variant Bio is now poised to advance multiple potentially life-changing therapeutic programs toward the clinic, and to create concomitant value for partner communities who have entrusted the company with their genetic data. For more info, please visit variantbio.com
SOURCE Variant Bio, Inc.
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