Metabolic disorders
Tech darling Enveda has raised a total of $845 million in the past six years. The latest funding round is intended to pave the way for an IPO someday.
Novo plans to hit $23B in revenue by 2035, has further reduced its workforce by 4,000 and is boosting manufacturing capacity for its Wegovy pill, but investors are unconvinced it will be enough to turn things around; Viking Therapeutics and Roche report positive results for their weight loss assets; Ultragenyx snags FDA approval for its Sanfilippo syndrome gene therapy; IPOs keep on coming.
Viking Therapeutics’ VK2735 met Truist’s “best-case scenario,” with robust weight loss that was largely maintained when patients transitioned to less frequent dosing. Viking’s stock popped more than 30% on Tuesday.
With sales of the oral GLP-1 medicine rising quickly, executives reassured investors that Novo has secured production capacity to support continued growth.
The mid-stage readout is one link in a chain of catalysts that analysts were watching for this year from Roche’s metabolic pipeline, which features assets from the $2.7 billion acquisition of Carmot Therapeutics as well as partner Zealand Pharma.
Novo has “gone shopping” to fill pipeline gaps, with a focus on obesity and diabetes, plus an expansion in blood and endocrine disorders, liver diseases and cardiovascular conditions.
Investors and analysts have been hounding Novo to beef up its pipeline and advance new molecules as a majority of the company’s sales stem from its semaglutide franchise.
The multi-drug partnership with Orbis Medicines—which Novo Holdings has backed since the biotech’s seed rounds—is focused on cardiometabolic targets, but the technology at the center of the deal could deliver oral weight loss candidates. Obesity rival Eli Lilly has also helped fund Orbis.
Analysts tentatively welcomed Novo’s new corporate rebrand—so long as it comes with a larger change to the company’s overall business strategy.
Kura Oncology has spun out Caspian around KO-7246, which seeks to increase the number and activity of beta cells in the pancreas, in turn boosting insulin production in patients with diabetes.
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