E-Therapeutics launches research collaboration with Novo Nordisk

(Sharecast News) - E-Therapeutics announced a research collaboration with Novo Nordisk on Monday, under which the two companies would use e-Therapeutics' proprietary 'Network-Driven Drug Discovery' (NDD) platform to look to discover potentially novel biological mechanisms and therapeutic approaches for a specific area of type-2 diabetes.The AIM-traded firm said type-2 diabetes currently accounted for about 90% of the estimated 425 million people with diabetes worldwide, with new treatments urgently required to tackle the growing incidence of the condition.Under the agreement, e-Therapeutics would work with Novo Nordisk for a period of 12 months, and use its NDD approach to identify novel intervention strategies, biological pathways and compounds for testing that could potentially form the basis of novel therapies."We are looking forward to cooperating with e-therapeutics. It is an exciting technology and we will investigate if it can support some of the early target discovery efforts we are building in Novo Nordisk Research Center Oxford," said Jan Nygaard Jensen, head of bioinformatics at Novo Nordisk and deputy head of that company's research centre in Oxford.E-Therapeutics said it would be reimbursed for its work under the collaboration, with Novo Nordisk retaining the option to license relevant intellectual property generated under the collaboration.Any future license would require mutual agreement of commercial terms, with financial details of the collaboration not disclosed."We are delighted to be working with Novo Nordisk, a world leader and innovator in diabetes care," said e-Therapeutics chief executive officer Dr Ray Barlow."This collaboration highlights the use of our NDD platform to understand and potentially create new treatments for complex diseases of great relevance to society, medicine and the industry."Our new collaboration with Novo Nordisk is the result of a systematic and rigorous business development exercise over the past year and we hope to announce a number of additional collaborations during the course of 2019."