Three years ago, No­vo Nordisk mo­men­tar­i­ly cap­tured the cen­ter stage of the sci­en­tif­ic world with the pro­to­type for a whole new kind of de­liv­ery ve­hi­cle for in­sulin. Work­ing with two world renowned sci­en­tists — Gio­van­ni Tra­ver­so at Har­vard’s Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal and MIT’s Robert Langer — as well as the re­searchers in its labs, they de­signed a unique, leop­ard tor­toise shell-shaped de­vice that had the po­ten­tial to land on the stom­ach wall and in­ject in­sulin in­to a pa­tient’s blood stream.

The de­vice was still years away from the clin­ic at the time, but No­vo — which li­censed sole rights — clear­ly loved the glow of at­ten­tion for land­mark ad­vances. In­sulin fit di­rect­ly in­to their wheel house. And this de­liv­ery tech al­so had po­ten­tial to ex­pand far be­yond in­sulin.

“In­sulin is a proof of con­cept,” Langer told the New York Times when the sto­ry broke in 2019.

So it seems on­ly nat­ur­al that No­vo Nordisk has now ex­tend­ed the pact be­gun in 2015, out to 2026.

This al­liance is all about “think­ing big, work­ing with the best, and us­ing our dis­tinct ca­pa­bil­i­ties to aim to achieve what might oth­er­wise seem im­pos­si­ble,” en­thused Mar­cus Schindler, ex­ec­u­tive VP and chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer of No­vo Nordisk.

The sci­en­tists are pret­ty pleased as well.

“We con­tin­ue to ex­plore the im­mense po­ten­tial for en­hanced de­liv­ery of bi­o­log­ic drugs and stem cell-de­rived ther­a­peu­tics through the plat­forms we are de­vel­op­ing,” said Tra­ver­so.

As for Langer, he’s built a glob­al rep around the biotechs he’s co-found­ed and the in­tri­cate net­work of ad­vi­so­ry roles he plays for a host of biotechs, big and small. His foun­da­tion­al role in de­vel­op­ing the lipid nanopar­ti­cle de­liv­ery tech for Mod­er­na’s mR­NA work earned him bil­lion­aire sta­tus, though there’s no sign he’s ever sold any of the com­pa­ny stock he got.

“I don’t be­lieve in that,” he once told me about sell­ing Mod­er­na stock.

He does be­lieve in con­tin­u­ing in­no­va­tion, and shows no signs of let­ting up at the age of 73.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.