Novo Nordisk has expanded its drug delivery collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). Building on advances such as the SOMA robotic pill, the partners will work on bioelectronics, biosensors and stimuli-responsive delivery devices.
MIT, BWH and Novo Nordisk began working together on alternatives to syringes and pen injectors in 2015. The goal was to co-create new devices that enable the oral delivery of biologics. Four years later, the partners published details of a capsule designed to inject a small needle made of compressed insulin into the stomach to enable the oral delivery of insulin.
Novo Nordisk licensed the technology, which it is working to get into the clinic. That done, the Danish drugmaker has expanded the scope of its collaboration with MIT and BWH and extended its duration out to 2026.
Over the next few years, Novo Nordisk will work with MIT and BWH under a deal that encompasses “the creation and integration of bioelectronics, biosensors and stimuli-responsive delivery devices.” The new deal, like its predecessor, covers work with the laboratories of Giovanni Traverso, M.D., Ph.D., and Robert Langer, Sc.D.
“Working with the Langer and Traverso teams continues to be a unique opportunity for Novo Nordisk to live out our aspiration of bringing transformational new solutions to patients by thinking big, working with the best, and using our distinct capabilities to aim to achieve what might otherwise seem impossible,” Marcus Schindler, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Novo Nordisk, said in a statement.
Novo Nordisk stepped up its interest in oral biologics in 2020 when it paid $1.35 billion to buy Emisphere for its drug delivery technology Eligen SNAC. The technology is used in Novo Nordisk’s Rybelsus, an oral formulation of the GLP-1 receptor agonist semaglutide.