No­vo Nordisk picks up sick­le-cell dis­ease drug in $400M li­cens­ing pact; Sapi­ence teams up with UK re­searcher on can­cer drugs

→ No­vo Nordisk has been say­ing that it’s seek­ing new as­sets in the hema­tol­ogy space, and to­day the Dan­ish phar­ma came up with a li­cens­ing deal to show for it. The agree­ment, worth up to $400 mil­lion in up­front, de­vel­op­ment and sales mile­stones if all goes to plan, gives No­vo ex­clu­sive world­wide rights to Epi­Des­tiny’s sick­le-cell dis­ease pro­gram — which re­cent­ly con­clud­ed a Phase I study. The two com­pa­nies are set­ting up a col­lab­o­ra­tion to de­vel­op EPI01 in SCD and be­ta-tha­las­saemia to­geth­er, while Solon, OH-based Epi­Des­tiny will con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing the can­di­date in can­cer on its own. “This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for No­vo Nordisk to en­ter in­to a new ther­a­peu­tic area close­ly re­lat­ed to our ex­ist­ing bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal busi­ness and there­by utilise our core R&D and com­mer­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ties to make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence for pa­tients liv­ing with a se­ri­ous chron­ic dis­ease,” said No­vo CSO Mads Krogs­gaard Thom­sen in a state­ment. The fi­nan­cial break­down of the pact was not dis­closed.

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