EMIS working with NVO. Right now they get a 2.5% royalty on a drug that may generate up to $10 billion a year. They are working with NVO on other drugs as well which will bring in more royalties/upfront payments
Great article. I especially like the section where they cite EMIS:
"A breakthrough for Novo Nordisk
We made the decision to try to develop oral protein-based therapies after failing in our efforts to develop inhaled forms more than a decade ago. Although we were the first to show that insulin can indeed be taken orally, the technology falls short of this being a viable treatment for the millions of people using insulin around the world (you can read an article I wrote specifically about oral insulin).
The better news is that when working with GLP-1 – a class of molecules traditionally used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity - we have recently succeeded and shown that an analogue of the GLP-1 hormone can be taken in a tablet. The key was to design GLP-1 so that it remains stable in the stomach and combine it with a carrier molecule known as SNAC, provided by our partner Emisphere. In doing this, we developed the world’s first peptide in a tablet for the treatment of diabetes.
As a scientist, this is very exciting and I hope that in the longer-term, the SNAC technology platform can be applied to a broader range of biological medications that address not only diabetes, but also other serious chronic diseases."
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