Orbis Medicines Enters Multi-Target Drug Discovery Partnership with Novo Nordisk Worth up to USD 1.4 Billion
Orbis Medicines Enters Multi-Target Drug Discovery Partnership with Novo Nordisk Worth up to USD 1.4 Billion
Agreement includes up to USD 1.4 billion with upfront and potential future milestone payments plus tiered royalties
Novo will also make a strategic investment in Orbis Medicines
Collaboration seeks to develop orally bioavailable macrocycle drug candidates for cardiometabolic targets
Partnership combines Novo's leadership in obesity and cardiometabolic disease with Orbis Medicines' proprietary AI-enabled macrocycle discovery platform
COPENHAGEN – September 17th, 2026 – Orbis Medicines, a leader in oral macrocycle drug discovery, today announced a strategic collaboration and license agreement with Novo Nordisk to discover and develop next-generation oral macrocycle therapeutics for cardiometabolic diseases. The agreement enables the acceleration of the development of a new class of orally available medicines for high-value therapeutic targets.
Under the terms of the agreement, Orbis Medicines is eligible to receive up to USD 1.4 billion in upfront and potential development and commercial milestone payments, in addition to tiered royalties on future product sales. Novo will also make a strategic investment in Orbis Medicines, underscoring its confidence in the company's nGen platform and long-term potential.
“This collaboration reinforces that the future of oral biologic drug discovery lies at the intersection of AI, proprietary experimental macrocycle datasets and world-class automated chemistry,” said Morten Graugaard, chief executive officer of Orbis Medicines. “Our nGen platform continuously learns from data generated by our high throughput chemistry and screening platform to design orally bioavailable macrocycles with the potential to replace injectable medicines. Together with Novo, we have an opportunity to unlock a new generation of oral medicines for cardiometabolic diseases and demonstrate the transformative potential of AI-enabled macrocycle drug discovery.”
The collaboration will leverage Orbis Medicines' proprietary nGen platform, which integrates generative AI and high-throughput synthesis capabilities. The platform's multi-parameter optimization (MPO) engine designs nCycles with good drug-like properties, continuously improved through one of the industry's largest experimental macrocycle datasets, which Orbis is generating in real time via its lab-in-the-loop nGen platform. nGen seeks to overcome the longstanding oral bioavailability and drug-likeness limitations of macrocycles, enabling rapid discovery of differentiated oral medicines against challenging targets.
"Orbis Medicines has developed a differentiated platform for macrocycle drug discovery, combining deep expertise in macrocycle chemistry with AI-enabled molecular design,” said Brian Vandahl, senior vice president, Therapeutics Discovery, Novo. “We believe this collaboration has the potential to unlock innovative oral treatment options for patients with cardiometabolic diseases while expanding the possibilities of macrocycle therapeutics."
About Orbis Medicines
Orbis Medicines is pioneering a new era for oral macrocycle drug discovery. Its nGen platform systematically delivers macrocycle candidates, termed nCycles. These are optimized for oral bioavailability, which has historically hindered therapeutic development of this versatile class of molecules. Orbis’ pipeline is initially focused on nCycle candidates against targets validated by blockbuster biologic drugs delivered by injection. Proof-of-concept of Orbis’ work has been published in Nature Communications and Nature Chemical Biology. The company has raised €116 million in venture funding to date, including a €90 million series A round led by NEA with new investors Lilly Ventures, Cormorant, EIFO and existing investors Forbion and Novo Holdings. Orbis is located in Copenhagen, Denmark and Lausanne, Switzerland. For more information, please visit: www.orbismedicines.com.
About nGen
nGen is Orbis Medicines’ technology platform for generating nCycles, a new class of fully synthetic macrocycle compounds optimized for oral bioavailability and membrane permeability. It consists of multiple proprietary integrated elements in a “lab in a loop” system starting with hit finding libraries of 100 billion compounds and target specific libraries designed by generative AI. The highly automated chemistry-based nGen platform can synthesize and analyze up to 100,000 distinct synthetic macrocycles in weeks, allowing the company to discover candidates with the right properties to enable oral dosing and intracellular targeting. The scale and quality of the data produced from these real compounds, paired with machine learning, creates an industry-leading platform that de-risks and accelerates development.
About Novo
Novo is the global healthcare company that believes lasting health starts now. For over a century, Novo has combined leading scientific expertise with a deep understanding of people’s lives. Novo develops treatments and support that help millions of people make progress they can see, feel and sustain now and in the future.
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