Nordic Life Science 1
T E X T b y M AL IN O T M ANI A C Q UI S I T ION
NOVO NORDISK PURCHASES ATTR AMYLOIDOSIS PROGRAM Robin Chatterjee, Karim Engelmark Cassimjee and Samuel Härgestam, founders, EnginZyme Marcus Schindler, CSO, Novo Nordisk I NNOVAT ION a cell-free synthetic biology platform that can provide R&D services to companies in multiple industries, including the pharma industry. The technology platform combines the breadth and power of nature (enzymatic cascades) with the efficiency of the chemical industry (packed bed reactors) in a best-of-both-worlds technical solution. “For the pharma industry and for active pharmaceutical substances there are many advantages with our technology. Pharmaceuticals are often complex molecules that demand an advanced synthesis in several steps, which produces a lot of waste. Using enzymes in combination with flow chemistry there are less steps, the amount of waste is decreased and the manufacturing process becomes simpler, cheaper and more environmentally friendly,” says Karim Engelmark Cassimjee, CEO, EnginZyme. “There’s just so much more you can do with biological systems than with traditional catalysts and petroleum-based building blocks, but the key word here is ‘effectively’ – it needs to be as cheap and easy to scale as the chemical solutions we’ve used for more than a century now,” he says. acquired Prothena’s whollyowned subsidiary and gains full worldwide rights to the intellectual property and related rights of Prothena’s ATTR amyloidosis business and pipeline. Prothena is eligible to receive development and sales milestone payments totaling up to 1.2 billion USD, including 100 million USD in upfront and near-term clinical milestone payments. PRX004 is a phase 2-ready antiamyloid immunotherapy designed to deplete the amyloid deposits that are associated with the disease pathology of ATTR amyloidosis. Prothena has completed a phase 1 study with PRX004 in patients with hereditary forms of ATTR in which PRX004 was found to be safe and well tolerated. Novo Nordisk will initially focus on the clinical development of PRX004 in ATTR cardiomyopathy. NORDIC LIFE SCIENCE 7 PHOTO TOBIAS BJÖRKGREN