Recently, Novo Nordisk signed an agreement with e-Therapeutics, a United Kingdom-based biotechnology company, to utilize its artificial intelligence-based drug discovery technology in finding novel therapies, specifically for type 2 diabetes.
Based on the deal, e-Therapeutics is expected to work together with Novo for one year and leverage its technology in identifying new intervention strategies, biological compounds and pathways with the potential of forming the basis of the novel therapies.
The UK-based biotechnology company is expected to be reimbursed for its role in the partnership and has the alternative of licensing any generated intellectual property.
What’s more, any license generated in the future will need mutual agreement, particularly that of commercial terms.
e-Therapeutics leverages a set of powerful computational tools in augmenting and assessing a massive volume of biological information that currently exists in private and public databases.
Through various techniques including state-of-the-art data analysis, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, e-Therapeutics develops and analyses different disease network models in a bid to recognize the possible proteins that can be disrupted to allow the treatment of illnesses.
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According to e-Therapeutics, this particular approach realistically shows the complexity of illness with its multiple, regularly linked cellular pathways.
Currently, Novo Nordisk prides itself on having a research center situated in Oxford, where guest or visiting researchers are working together with Oxford University academics in advancing the development of therapies for treating type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Ray Barlow, the chief executive officer of e-Therapeutics, said: “This collaboration highlights the use of our network-driven drug discovery platform to understand and potentially create new treatments for complex diseases of great relevance to society, medicine, and the industry.
“Our new collaboration with Novo Nordisk is the result of a systematic and rigorous business development exercise over the past year, and we hope to announce a number of additional collaborations during the course of 2019.”
Jan Nygaard Jensen, the head of bioinformatics and the deputy head of Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford, said: “We are looking forward to cooperating with e-Therapeutics. It is an exciting technology, and we will investigate if it can support some of the early target discovery efforts we are building in the Novo Nordisk Research Centre in Oxford.”
Novo Nordisk, a Denmark-based global healthcare firm with over 90 years of leadership and innovation in diabetes care, is involved in spearheading change with the objective of defeating diabetes and other severe chronic illnesses.
Thanks to its long-standing heritage, the company boasts vast capabilities and experience in assisting people to fight against diabetes and other chronic diseases such as obesity, growth disorders, and haemophilia.
Furthermore, Novo Nordisk has an estimated 43,200 employees located in 79 nations and markets all its products in over 170 countries around the globe.
e-therapeutics, on the other hand, is an Oxford, United Kingdom(UK)-based firm with a powerful and unique computer-based platform and revolutionary network-powered drug discovery (NDD) approach that allows the company to discover new and better drugs faster.
The company’s NDD methodology entails using its powerful computer-based platform and biological expertise in developing and analyzing network models of illness process, recognizing protein patterns that can be interfered with to cure disease.
