• Collaboration leverages Variant Bio's innovative VB-Inference Platform and expertise partnering with global populations

• Commercial terms include an upfront payment and additional near-term R&D funding totaling up to $50 million, plus potential option and milestone payments

SEATTLE, Jan. 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Variant Bio, a genomics-driven drug discovery company, today announced a multi-year research collaboration with Novo Nordisk to discover novel targets for the treatment of metabolic disease.

The partnership between Novo Nordisk and Variant Bio is aimed at identifying and validating multiple novel targets with sufficient human genetic evidence to initiate human-centric drug discovery programs.

Collaboration aims to identify and validate novel targets with strong genetic evidence and clear therapeutic hypotheses

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"Metabolic disease - including obesity - affects people all over the world, yet newer targets with genetic evidence are primarily based on studies with European-ancestry populations. As a result, there is still an unmet need in this space," said David Moller, Chief Scientific Officer at Variant Bio. "We hope that a deeper understanding of the relationships between genetic variation and metabolic traits will yield novel targets and ultimately lead to better and more diverse treatment options for people around the globe."

"Through our partnership with Variant Bio, we aspire to gain a more complete understanding of the genetic causes of metabolic disease," said Bei Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Global Drug Discovery at Novo Nordisk. "Having conducted over two dozen genomic research projects with diverse populations around the world, Variant Bio is well positioned to carry out genomic research on metabolic disease in places that have not yet been fully studied. We believe that the likelihood of discovering truly novel targets is higher because of the nature of these data. What is more, human genetic evidence should increase our odds of discovering and developing differentiated new therapies for metabolic diseases."

The collaboration leverages Variant Bio's innovative VB-Inference analysis platform to identify novel targets with strong genetic evidence and clear therapeutic hypotheses. VB-Inference maps the molecular mechanisms of disease by integrating whole genomes with deep phenotyping and rich multi-omic data using statistical genetics and machine learning. This mechanistic understanding has the potential to better inform drug discovery compared to genetic association studies alone and is made possible by extensive transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. The platform has enabled several new R&D programs within Variant Bio's internal pipeline.

"We are excited to put our innovative VB-Inference platform to work in an area that impacts so many people globally," said Stephane Castel, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Variant Bio. "Partnering with one of the most experienced metabolic disease drug discovery teams gives us the opportunity to translate our genetic findings into treatments that will have a real world impact."

Under the terms of the agreement, Novo Nordisk will pay Variant Bio an upfront payment and additional near-term R&D funding totaling up to $50 million, plus potential option and milestone payments on targets that arise from the collaboration. Consistent with Variant Bio's long-term benefit-sharing program, this partnership will trigger the distribution of financial benefits to partner communities around the world who contributed their data to genomic research.

The multi-year target discovery collaboration announced today signals a new chapter of growth for Variant Bio. The strategic partnership with Novo Nordisk demonstrates the value of Variant Bio's potential to enable the development of novel therapeutics based on results from its innovative genomic studies.

About Variant Bio
Variant Bio is developing life-saving therapies by studying the genes of people with exceptional health-related traits. By identifying communities with unique genetic architectures and outlier phenotypes, Variant Bio has identified novel human genetic evidence that is the basis for programs with breakthrough potential across multiple therapeutic areas. The company's research is powered by its proprietary VB-Inference platform, which integrates across deep phenotyping and multi-omic data using statistical genetics and AI/ML approaches to identify and validate therapeutic targets. With ethics at its core, the company launched an unprecedented benefit-sharing program in 2020, in which it has pledged tangible benefits that directly impact the communities it partners with throughout the world. Variant Bio is now poised to advance multiple potentially life-changing therapeutic programs toward the clinic, and to create concomitant value for partner communities who have entrusted the company with their genetic data. Follow Variant Bio's news and updates at variantbio.com and via its blog, on X/Twitter @VariantBio, on Instagram @variant_bio, and on LinkedIn.

SOURCE Variant Bio, Inc.