As No­vo Nordisk be­gins PhII sick­le cell tri­al, it snags a lat­er-stage blood dis­or­der drug in $1.1B For­ma buy

A few weeks af­ter of­fload­ing a can­cer drug un­der re­view at the FDA, For­ma Ther­a­peu­tics is pack­ing up the rest of its be­long­ings and head­ing to a new home: No­vo Nordisk, which wants to beef up its pipeline in sick­le cell dis­ease.

Just weeks af­ter start­ing a Phase II tri­al of an­oth­er SCD drug can­di­date that it ex­clu­sive­ly snagged four years ago, No­vo is bet­ting on For­ma’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al med, which is in what the biotech hopes to be a piv­otal tri­al, with the first in­ter­im da­ta drop slat­ed be­fore year’s end. The red blood cell dis­or­der has been in the bio­phar­ma spot­light as of late, with Pfiz­er dol­ing out $5.4 bil­lion to net an ap­proved prod­uct (Oxbry­ta) and pipeline from Glob­al Blood Ther­a­peu­tics.

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