Novo Nordisk and Vivtex Corporation have announced a groundbreaking partnership to develop next-generation oral biologic medicines targeting obesity, diabetes, and related conditions.

 

Under the deal, Vivtex will license select oral drug-delivery technologies to Novo Nordisk, with potential payouts—including upfront payments, research funding, milestone payments, and tiered royalties—totaling up to $2.1 billion.

 

“Novo Nordisk has been at the forefront of innovation in protein and peptide engineering for several decades, and not least within oral formulation of peptides. We launched the first-ever oral biologic more than five years ago and have recently launched the world’s first oral biologic for obesity,” said Brian Vandahl, senior vice president, Therapeutics Discovery, at Novo Nordisk. 

 

“We continue to push the boundaries of science through both internal and external innovation to fulfil our mission of treating millions more people living with obesity and diabetes and their associated comorbidities.”

 

The collaboration targets one of medicine’s toughest challenges: delivering biologic drugs orally. Traditionally, such therapies require injections due to poor absorption in the gastrointestinal tract. By combining Novo Nordisk’s expertise in peptide and protein therapeutics with Vivtex’s proprietary gastrointestinal screening and formulation platform, the partnership aims to identify oral therapeutics capable of transforming treatment.

 

“Making biologics oral has been one of the most difficult challenges in drug delivery,” said Thomas von Erlach, CEO and co-founder of Vivtex. “Vivtex was founded to systematically solve this problem by integrating high-throughput experimentation with computational and AI-enabled analytics. Partnering with Novo Nordisk allows us to apply our platform across important metabolic disease areas, with the goal of enabling oral therapies that would otherwise require injection.”

 

Vivtex’s technology integrates proprietary gastrointestinal assays, drug-delivery methods, and AI-driven simulations to optimize oral biologics for high bioavailability and consistent in-human performance.

 

Once research and formulation selection are complete, Novo Nordisk will take the lead on global development, regulatory filings, manufacturing, and commercialization of any resulting products.