Denmark-based startup Orbis Medicines has launched with €26 million in seed funding in its drive to search for macrocycle drugs, with a focus on high-value oral alternatives to blockbuster biologics.
Pictured: Wall sign of the Novo Nordisk Foundation and Novo Holdings in Denmark/iStock, CR
Danish biotech Orbis Medicines announced its emergence on the drug development scene Thursday with €26 million ($28.1 million) in seed financing backed by Novo Holdings and life sciences venture capital firm Forbion.
According to Orbis, the funds will support its expansion. The company is focused on macrocycle drugs, described as a family of compounds with “highly desirable therapeutic properties” that have a cyclic structure.
While Orbis did not provide the exact targets for its pipeline, the company will initially “focus on high-value oral alternatives to blockbuster biologic drugs and opening new targets to therapeutic intervention.” Orbis is also working on a pipeline of macrocycle drugs for “intra-and extra-cellular targets” but did not provide specifics.
“After decades of challenging de novo synthesis, the universe of potential macrocycle targets is now available for exploration. Not only can Orbis reach a wealth of new targets, both inside and outside cells, but we can do this while preserving an oral format to pioneer a new therapeutic class of oral macrocycles. It’s a milestone for drug development,” Morten Døssing, chair of the Orbis board and partner at Novo Holdings said in a statement.
Orbis was founded in 2021 by the Seeds Investment team of Novo Holdings, with the scientific foundation of the company being developed by Chrisitan Heinis and Sevan Habeshian, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Habeshian is also co-founder and CTO at Orbis.
“We can generate hundreds of thousands of diverse compounds in record time and immediately apply a range of functional assays in a high-throughput fashion to each compound to home in on winners. Establishing this robust, reliable engine for candidate design was crucial for us as we look to bring macrocycle drugs to major patient populations,” Døssing said.
Novo Holdings made a big splash earlier this month with its purchase of contract manufacturer Catalent for over $16 billion, providing a massive shot in the arm for Novo Nordisk to expand its production capacity for its hot-selling GLP-1 drugs.
In September 2023, Forbion co-led a Series B for Mariana Oncology and invested in Calluna Pharma in January 2024.
Tyler Patchen is a staff writer at BioSpace. You can reach him at tyler.patchen@biospace.com. Follow him on LinkedIn.
