Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk has struck several deals, potentially worth over £4 billion in total, to secure rights to new weight-loss and cardiometabolic disease treatments. Novo’s deal spree is likely an attempt to curb anticipated revenue loss as the patent on semaglutide – the active ingredient in Novo’s Wegovy and Ozempic, marketed for weight loss and diabetes respectively – has expired in several countries and is set to expire in Europe and the US over the next few years.
In the first of the deals, Novo has licensed a once-weekly oral GLP-1 drug, which is ready to start phase 1 trials, from China’s Hengrui Pharma for up to $2.6 billion (£2.0 billion). The deal will allow Novo to develop and manufacture the drug globally, except in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Nanexa has agreed a deal worth up to €1.2 billion (£1.0 billion), to combine its long-acting injectable drug delivery technology with Novo’s weight-loss and type 2 diabetes drugs, potentially allowing monthly rather than weekly injections. Novo also struck a partnership deal worth up to $1.4 billion in September with Orbis Medicines to develop oral therapies for a range of cardiometabolic diseases.
‘Novo has pioneered the field of oral peptides,’ says Martin Holst Lange, Novo’s chief scientific officer. He added that the company is ‘continuously looking to advance our broad and deep oral pipeline across obesity, diabetes and other cardiometabolic diseases’.
In 2025, Novo generated more than 90% of its sales from diabetes and obesity treatments, totalling DKK290 billion (£33 billion). Yet, the company has already lost patent protection against semaglutide in India, Brazil and Canada. Patents for the drug in the key markets of Europe and the US are expected to expire in the 2030s.
In parallel, Novo has begun a restructuring programme, cutting thousands of jobs in an attempt to save around £1 billion in annual costs.
Earlier this month, Novo shareholders told the Financial Times that the company must now grow its portfolio by developing new medicines and acquiring existing drugs. Julia Angeles, investment manager at Baillie Gifford, told the FT that she ‘would like to see Novo put their tentacles in as many novel approaches as possible’, which would allow the company to explore treatments before committing to them.
Novo attempted to buy a pipeline of next-generation metabolic hormone weight loss drugs from US biotech Metsera last year. However, Metsera decided instead to accept a revised offer from Pfizer worth over $7 billion, as Novo’s deal of the same value involved more risk.
A spokesperson from Novo told Chemistry World that its ‘recent deals are in line with our long-term [business development] strategy’. However, the company said that it is not providing any more specific comments on what that means for individual deals.
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