Variant Bio: Variant Bio Announces Multi-Year Research Partnership with Novo Nordisk to Discover Novel Targets for Metabolic Disease

Variant Bio announced a multi-year research collaboration with Novo Nordisk to discover novel targets for the treatment of metabolic disease. The partnership between Novo Nordisk and Variant Bio is aimed at identifying and validating multiple novel targets with sufficient human genetic evidence to initiate human-centric drug discovery programs. The collaboration leverages Variant Bio's innovative VB-Inference analysis platform to identify novel targets with strong genetic evidence and clear therapeutic hypotheses. VB-Inference maps the molecular mechanisms of disease by integrating whole genomes with deep phenotyping and rich multi-omic data using statistical genetics and machine learning. This mechanistic understanding has the potential to better inform drug discovery compared to genetic association studies alone and is made possible by extensive transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. The platform has enabled several new R&D programs within Variant Bio's internal pipeline. Under the terms of the agreement, Novo Nordisk will pay Variant Bio an upfront payment and additional near-term R&D funding totaling up to $50 million, plus potential option and milestone payments on targets that arise from the collaboration. Consistent with Variant Bio's long-term benefit-sharing program, this partnership will trigger the distribution of financial benefits to partner communities around the world who contributed their data to genomic research. The multi-year target discovery collaboration announced signals a new chapter of growth for Variant Bio. The strategic partnership with Novo Nordisk demonstrates the value of Variant Bio's potential to enable the development of novel therapeutics based on results from its innovative genomic studies. Variant Bio announced a multi-year research collaboration with Novo Nordisk to discover novel targets for the treatment of metabolic disease. The partnership between Novo Nordisk and Variant Bio is aimed at identifying and validating multiple novel targets with sufficient human genetic evidence to initiate human-centric drug discovery programs. The collaboration leverages Variant Bio's innovative VB-Inference analysis platform to identify novel targets with strong genetic evidence and clear therapeutic hypotheses. VB-Inference maps the molecular mechanisms of disease by integrating whole genomes with deep phenotyping and rich multi-omic data using statistical genetics and machine learning. This mechanistic understanding has the potential to better inform drug discovery compared to genetic association studies alone and is made possible by extensive transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. The platform has enabled several new R&D programs within Variant Bio's internal pipeline. Under the terms of the agreement, Novo Nordisk will pay Variant Bio an upfront payment and additional near-term R&D funding totaling up to $50 million, plus potential option and milestone payments on targets that arise from the collaboration. Consistent with Variant Bio's long-term benefit-sharing program, this partnership will trigger the distribution of financial benefits to partner communities around the world who contributed their data to genomic research. The multi-year target discovery collaboration announced signals a new chapter of growth for Variant Bio. The strategic partnership with Novo Nordisk demonstrates the value of Variant Bio's potential to enable the development of novel therapeutics based on results from its innovative genomic studies.