Novo Nordisk beefs up in oral obesity drugs with Vivtex deal

Novo Nordisk is leaving no stone unturned in its bid to maintain its leading position in weight-loss therapies, planning for the future with a wide-ranging, $2.1 billion deal with drug delivery specialist Vivtex.

The aim of the alliance is to come up with a new generation of medicines for obesity and diabetes using Vivtex's technology platform for oral delivery of large biologic molecules, including proteins and peptides.

Novo Nordisk launched an oral formulation of its peptide-based GLP-1 agonist Wegovy (semaglutide) in the US a few weeks ago, claiming a lead in a category that until then was made up mainly by medicines that need to be administered as weekly, subcutaneous injections.

The company has reported strong initial uptake of the pill version of the drug, saying towards the end of January that new prescriptions were running at around 50,000 per week, and has predicted that oral therapies will be the key to broadening access to incretin-based weight-loss and diabetes therapies.

In a statement, the company said the Vivtex collaboration aims to achieve oral delivery of biologic drug candidates that are currently limited to injectable administration due to poor absorption in the gastrointestinal tract. The specific molecules have not been revealed.

Vivtex is working on various approaches to drug delivery, including the use of AI to predict how drug molecules will behave in the GI tract and find new ways to encourage their absorption. Novo Nordisk said the agreement – which includes upfront payments, research funding, and milestones – covers "select oral drug-delivery technologies."

Boston, Massachusetts-based Vivtex was founded in 2018 by MIT researchers Robert Langer, Thomas von Erlach, and Giovanni Traverso. The company has developed a robotics-driven platform that includes a high-throughput screen – described as a 'GI tract on a chip' – that is combined with computational modelling techniques.

Under the terms of the deal, Novo Nordisk will assume responsibility for global development, regulatory activities, manufacturing, and commercialisation of any therapies that emerge from the collaboration.

The company's head of therapeutics discovery, Brian Vandahl, said the alliance builds on a strong heritage in oral delivery of large-molecule drugs, with the launch of the first-ever oral biologic for diabetes more than five years ago – Rybelsus (semaglutide) for type 2 diabetes – and the Wegovy pill launch.

"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," he added.

The deal comes shortly after Novo Nordisk reported disappointing data with amylin and GLP-1-targeted CagriSema (cagrilintide and semaglutide), an injectable it hoped would help it compete against Eli Lilly's fast-growing obesity therapy Zepbound (tirzepatide), whose sales overtook the injectable form of Wegovy in the last quarter of 2025.