The rivalry between the two pharmaceutical giants that dominate the market for weight loss medicines intensified Wednesday when one of the companies announced it’s teaming up with a Boston startup.
Novo Nordisk, the century-old Danish company behind such blockbuster GLP-1 treatments as Wegovy for obesity and Ozempic for diabetes, said it has signed a deal with Vivtex, which specializes in developing oral alternatives to drugs administered by injections. The partners may develop more GLP-1s or another class of medicines.
Vivtex is a spinout founded eight years ago by three MIT scientists, including the renowned inventor and Moderna cofounder Robert Langer and two of his onetime mentees, Giovanni Traverso and Thomas von Erlach. Von Erlach is the chief executive of the startup, which is located at the old headquarters of the Globe on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester.
Novo said the partnership to develop “next-generation” pills to treat obesity and diabetes could be worth as much as $2.1 billion to Vivtex, depending on whether the biotech reaches certain milestones. Vivtex will receive a guaranteed upfront payment, but the partners aren’t disclosing the amount, according to a Vivtex spokesperson.
The deal comes just weeks after another Boston biotech, Nimbus Therapeutics, said it was teaming up with Eli Lilly & Co., Novo’s rival in the GLP-1 market, to develop a new oral obesity treatment. That deal was worth up to $1.3 billion to Nimbus.
Novo and Indianapolis-based Lilly have been locked in a fierce rivalry to dominate the multibillion-dollar market for GLP-1 drugs. Novo achieved a milestone last month when it launched an oral form of Wegovy, the first GLP-1 approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a pill. But Lilly holds the majority share in the market because its drugs, Zepbound for obesity and Mounjaro for diabetes, have proven more effective. Also, Lilly moved first into the direct-to-consumer space, which has gained traction as many commercial insurance plans have dropped coverage of the weight-loss drugs.
On Tuesday, Novo launched another salvo when it announced that it plans to slash the monthly prices of its GLP-1s in the United States by up to 50 percent in 2027. Wegovy, whether injected or in a pill, and Ozempic will have a new lower list price of $675 a month starting on Jan. 1, 2027.
Novo’s deal with Vivtex underscores that the Danish company is eager to develop more weight loss and diabetes drugs that come as pills.
“We continue to push the boundaries of science through both internal and external innovation to fulfill our mission of treating millions more people living with obesity and diabetes,” said Brian Vandahl, senior vice president for therapeutics discovery at Novo.
Vivtex uses robotic screening technology and artificial intelligence to identify new oral drug candidates that can be absorbed by the gastrointestinal system instead of being administered with needles.
“I’m very excited about it,” Langer said of the partnership with Novo. “I think we’ll be able to do a lot of good.” Langer, 77, is the scientific founder or cofounder of more than 40 biotechs.
Vivtex has seven other partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, according to a spokesperson, including Equillium, Orbis Medicines, AI Proteins, and Astellas Pharma.
Vivtex will hunt for potential weight loss drugs using “gut on a chip” technology that it developed. The technology mimics the functioning of a human intestine to enable scientists to test thousands of potential oral drugs a day. The chips are smartphone-sized devices with tiny channels that house living tissue from humans or pigs.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com.