The agreement includes at least $87 million in product development and sales milestone payments to Emisphere, of which $10 million will be the minimum first year payment, as well as royalties on sales.
The agreement also provides Novo Nordisk with the option to develop oral formulations of Novo Nordisk compounds other than GLP-1 receptor agonists using Emisphere’s proprietary carrier technology. Further financial details of the agreement were not released.
Under the new agreement, Novo Nordisk is responsible for the development and commercialization of the product candidates. Novo Nordisk and Emisphere have collaborated since 2007 on early-stage preclinical research that has preliminarily confirmed the utility of Emisphere’s carriers to provide bioavailable oral formulations of GLP-1 receptor agonists.
Peter Kurtzhals, senior vice president of the diabetes research unit at Novo Nordisk, said: “This is an encouraging agreement on a promising technology for oral administration of proteins. It fits very well with Novo Nordisk’s strategy within diabetes research.”