Novo Nordisk and Vivtex partner to develop next-generation oral medicines for obesity and diabetes
Summary by AI BETAClose X
- Partnership will leverage Vivtex’s proprietary technologies built to identify optimal oral formulations for peptide and protein therapeutics with improved bioavailability
- Novo Nordisk will lead global development and commercialization, and Vivtex is eligible to receive up to 2.1 billion US dollars, as well as royalties on net sales of future products
- Partnership expands Vivtex’s platform to metabolic diseases and supports Novo Nordisk’s mission to deliver scalable and innovative medicines to people with obesity and diabetes
Bagsværd, Denmark and Boston, MA, US, 25 February 2026 – Novo Nordisk and Vivtex Corporation today announced a partnership to develop next-generation oral biologic medicines for obesity, diabetes and associated comorbidities.
Under the agreement, Vivtex will license select oral drug-delivery technologies to Novo Nordisk, while Vivtex is eligible to receive upfront consideration, research funding and milestone payments totalling up to 2.1 billion US dollars, and tiered royalties on future product sales.
“Novo Nordisk has been at the forefront of innovation in protein and peptide engineering for several decades, and not least within oral formulation of peptides. We launched the first-ever oral biologic more than five years ago and have recently launched the world’s first oral biologic for obesity,” said Brian Vandahl, senior vice president, Therapeutics Discovery, at Novo Nordisk. “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.”
The collaboration aims to enable the oral delivery of biologic drug candidates that are traditionally limited to injectable administration due to poor absorption in the gastrointestinal tract. The partnership combines Novo Nordisk’s deep expertise in peptide and protein therapeutics with Vivtex’s proprietary gastrointestinal screening and formulation platform to identify next-generation oral therapeutics.
“Making biologics oral has been one of the most difficult challenges in drug delivery,” said Thomas von Erlach, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Vivtex. “Vivtex was founded to systematically solve this problem by integrating high-throughput experimentation with computational and AI-enabled analytics. Partnering with Novo Nordisk allows us to apply our platform across important metabolic disease areas, with the goal of enabling oral therapies that would otherwise require injection.”
Vivtex’s platform combines multiple proprietary gastrointestinal screening assays, drug-delivery technologies, and computational simulation and AI capabilities to optimize the oral delivery of biologic medicines. The platform is designed to achieve high oral bioavailability and consistent in-human performance.
Following research and formulation selection, Novo Nordisk will assume responsibility for global development, regulatory activities, manufacturing, and commercialization of any resulting products.
About Vivtex Corporation
Vivtex Corporation is a biotechnology company transforming the oral delivery of therapeutics. Founded by MIT scientists Drs. Thomas von Erlach, Giovanni Traverso, and Robert S. Langer, Vivtex has developed a robotics-driven platform that integrates its proprietary GI-ORIS™ high-throughput screening system — a “GI tract on a chip” — whole-gastrointestinal tissue robotic interface published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, with AI-enabled computational modeling to design and optimize orally delivered therapeutics, including biologics, for predictable human performance. The platform enables rapid screening of thousands of formulations per day and has demonstrated near-perfect correlation with human intestinal absorption, substantially outperforming conventional in vitro models. Vivtex partners with leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to advance clinical programs and expand patient access to convenient, effective oral therapies. Vivtex operates in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and Schlieren, Switzerland. For more information, visit www.vivtex.com.
About Novo Nordisk
Novo Nordisk is a leading global healthcare company, founded in 1923 and headquartered in Denmark. Our purpose is to drive change to defeat serious chronic diseases, built upon our heritage in diabetes. We do so by pioneering scientific breakthroughs, expanding access to our medicines, and working to prevent and ultimately cure disease. Novo Nordisk employs about 68,800 people in 80 countries and markets its products in around 170 countries. For more information, visit novonordisk.com, Facebook, X, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Contacts for further information
| Novo Nordisk Media: | |
| Ambre James-Brown +45 3079 9289 globalmedia@novonordisk.com | Liz Skrbkova (US) +1 609 917 0632 lzsk@novonordisk.com |
| Novo Nordisk Investors: | |
| Jacob Martin Wiborg Rode +45 3075 5956 jrde@novonordisk.com | Sina Meyer +45 3079 6656 azey@novonordisk.com |
| Max Ung +45 3077 6414 mxun@novonordisk.com | Christoffer Sho Togo Tullin +45 3079 1471 cftu@novonordisk.com |
| Alex Bruce +45 3444 2613 axeu@novonordisk.com | Frederik Taylor Pitter (US) +1 609 613 0568 fptr@novonordisk.com |
| Vivtex Media: | |
| Thomas von Erlach, CEO tvonerlach@vivtex.com | Kimberly Ha kimberly.ha@kkhadvisors.com |
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