Vivtex Corporation<\/a>, launched in 2018 as a spinoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will license oral drug-delivery technologies to Novo for weight loss, diabetes, and related conditions. Novo has agreed to pay Vivtex up to $2.1 billion across upfront and milestone payments.<\/p>\n In oral formulations of Wegovy and Rybelsus, its semaglutide pills for weight loss and diabetes, Novo uses salcaprozate sodium, an excipient<\/a> also known as sodium N-[8-(2-hydroxybenzoyl)amino]caprylate or SNAC for short. SNAC creates a less-acidic pH buffer zone in the gut to minimize protein degradation and help increase peptide absorption. But, Vivtex CEO Thomas von Erlach says, \u201cThere is still a little more room to increase the oral bioavailability of these products.\u201d<\/p>\n Vivtex began as von Erlach\u2019s postdoctoral project in the lab of MIT professor and prolific start-up founder Bob Langer. In 2018, von Erlach spun it out as a start-up, with himself, Langer, and MIT professor Giovanni Traverso as cofounders. Underpinning Vivtex\u2019s drug-delivery technology is a robotic screening platform<\/a> that uses gastrointestinal tissue from pigs to predict how different drugs will interact with the human gut (Nat. Biomed. Eng. 2024, DOI: 10.1038\/s41551-023-01128-9). The screening system has informed new\u2014but proprietary\u2014ways of getting drugs to be absorbed in the stomach, von Erlach says.<\/p>\n The Novo partnership involves use of the screening system as well as drug-delivery platforms Vivtex has developed. Von Erlach declines to elaborate on how the delivery systems work.<\/p>\n Novo Nordisk joins another 10 partners Vivtex has signed on in the last few years, including Astellas Pharma, AI Proteins, and Equillium.<\/p>\n
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