Cure diabetes and obesity with printed materials? Novo Nordisk Introduces Cell Therapy for $2.6 billion

Diabetes pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk (NVO.US) has signed a collaboration agreement with Canadian company Aspect Biosystems to develop bioprinted tissue therapies to treat diabetes and obesity.

Under the agreement, Novo Nordisk will receive an exclusive worldwide license to develop up to four products for diabetes and obesity using Aspect's bioprinting technology. Aspect will receive an initial payment of $75 million, consisting of an upfront payment, research funding and investment in the form of convertible bonds. In addition, Aspect will receive up to $650 million in product development, regulatory, commercial and sales sharing per product, for a total transaction value of up to $2.6 billion.

What's new about bioprinting tissue therapy?

The dilemma of obesity treatment

Obesity is a major health challenge facing the world today. According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.5 billion adults worldwide are obese, and nearly 400 million of them have a BMI of over 30.

The medical community generally believes that obesity is usually caused by diet, genetics, lifestyle and other environmental factors. Its main symptoms include weight gain, fat accumulation and insulin resistance. It can lead to many chronic diseases and health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

Treating obesity has become a huge market, with treatments ranging from diet and exercise to drugs and surgery.

Drugs are one of the most common treatments, and obesity drugs are a large and growing market. The global diet drug market reached billions of dollars in 2020 and is expected to grow in the coming years, according to market research firms. Currently, there are a variety of drugs on the market for weight loss, including well-known brands such as Xenical and Orlistat. In addition, naturopathic and health product companies have begun to introduce weight loss drugs based on plant extracts. However, the safety and effectiveness of weight-loss drugs has long been a controversial issue. Some weight-loss drugs have been shown to cause serious side effects, such as heart attacks and strokes.

Surgery is another common way to lose weight, such as gastrointestinal bypass surgery and stomach reduction surgery. These procedures can lead to rapid weight loss, but there are many risks and adverse effects, such as stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms after surgery.

Because obesity is a complex problem, no one solution is foolproof or immediate. Therefore, the search for more effective treatment has been an important research direction in the medical field.

As Novo Nordisk expands its moat, it continues to ramp up its obesity treatment

Novo Nordisk is a multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Denmark. Its core products are represented by diabetes medicines, including injectable insulin, non-insulin and oral medicines, covering a wide range of types such as Type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes.

In recent years, Novo Nordisk has expanded into the development of obesity drugs.

Semaglutide is a peptide hormone developed by Novo Nordisk that mimics insulin-like peptide-1.

In clinical trials, researchers have found weight loss in patients taking these drugs, which has caused widespread concern in the medical community. That's why, in 2021, Novo Nordisk introduced a weight-loss needle.

Spurred by Mr Musk and a number of Hollywood actors, it's sales quadrupled to Dkr6.2bn in 2022, helping Novo Nordisk become the second-largest drug company by market capitalisation.

Novo Nordisk recently partnered with Aspect Biosystems to further expand its moat in the areas of diabetes and obesity.

Aspect Biosystems' core technology is the use of bioprinting to create three-dimensional biological tissues that can replace damaged structures and enable the treatment of diseases. Its technology platform, the Lab-on-a-Printer™, is essentially a microfluidity-driven 3D bioprink, where each print head contains multiple microscopic channels for redirecting liquid or ink. This unique technique allows multiple cell types to be layered to create 3D tissue structures.

Aspect Biosystems has successfully applied this technology to create a wide range of biological tissues, such as liver, kidney, cartilage and bone tissue. Its business spans pharmaceutical, biotechnology and research, and it has worked with a number of major pharmaceutical companies and healthcare organizations.

One such application is 3D BioRing™ tissue, which mimics the contraction and relaxation of human muscles. Aspect Biosystems has undertaken a number of high-profile projects in the industry since 2013, forming a partnership with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson in 2017 and launching a project to create cartilage to treat knee injuries.

Novo Nordisk will collaborate with Aspect to develop up to four products to treat diabetes or obesity. They will start with type 1 diabetes and then move on to type 2. If the first two indications are successful, they will launch the obesity study.

Recreating tissue organs: bioprinting techniques

Bioprinting is an emerging technology that can produce biologically functional tissues and organs that can be used to replace, repair or supplement biological tissue functions in the body to treat a number of chronic diseases.

In simple terms, bioprinting is a type of 3D printing technology that works in a similar way to traditional inkjet printers, except that the "inks" used are biological materials (such as cells and biological scaffolds) rather than non-biological materials such as plastics or metals. This technique can provide direct cellular repair to defective areas in the human body.

Bioprinting has applications in a variety of fields, including biomedicine, biomaterials, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. The advantage of bioprinting is that it can provide highly personalized treatments, as each person's body is unique and each obese person faces different issues. Bioprinting technology can be used to provide patients with a customized treatment plan based on their individual conditions to achieve the best results. Not only that, bioprinting can also reduce the risk of treatment because it avoids the use of traditional surgical methods, thus reducing surgical risks and side effects. In addition, bioprinting can also reduce recovery time, as it can repair damaged tissues and organs more quickly.

To complete the design and processing of a 3D bioprinted tissue, imaging (including X-ray, CT or MRI) of the damaged tissue and normal physiological tissue as well as the external environment is required to obtain detailed information of the biological tissue to guide the design of tissues and organs. In order to obtain the best tissue morphology and function, a variety of construction methods are usually required, including bionic assembly, tissue self-assembly and micro-tissue block assembly.

Among these methods, bionics mainly imitates biological structures in nature to achieve similar effects with natural tissues. Tissue self-assembly utilizes the adhesion and growth of cells to realize the formation of tissue structure. Microtissue blocks are a series of small pieces of cells and material that are further combined to form large three-dimensional structures.

In the selection of extracellular matrix materials and cell types, it is also necessary to consider the morphology and function of specific tissues. Commonly used materials include synthetic or natural polymers and extracellular substrates, and cell types may be derived from either allogeneic or autogenous cells.

Once the materials are ready for printing, they need to be integrated with bioprinting systems, such as inkjet, microextrusion or laser-assisted printing, to ensure that the cellular and extracellular matrix materials are positioned and stacked accurately.

For some special tissues, they also need to be grown in a bioreactor for a period of time to gain sufficient mechanical strength and biocompatibility before they can be transplanted into patients. Of course, three-dimensional tissues can also be used for in vitro applications, such as drug screening, toxicity testing and disease modeling.

conclusion

Bioprinting is expected to be one of the key technologies for obesity treatment in the future. The partnership between Novo Nordisk and Aspect Biosystems aims to provide better treatment options for obese patients by producing functional tissues and organs, such as fat cells, muscle tissue and insulin-producing cells, that can be used in obesity treatment. Tissues and organs produced by bioprinting technology can replace unhealthy tissues and organs in patients' bodies, so as to restore their normal physiological functions and achieve the goal of treating obesity.

In addition, bioprinting can help to develop more precise treatments that can be tailored to patients' individual physiological characteristics and conditions, thereby improving treatment effectiveness and reducing side effects. With a precise treatment regimen, patients can recover more quickly and avoid unnecessary treatment.

Despite the great potential of bioprinting in the treatment of obesity, there are still some challenges. One of the challenges is how to produce high-quality biological tissues and organs that meet standards. To solve this problem, we need to improve bioprinting technology and develop more refined bioprinting materials. In addition, clinical trials of bioprinting technology need to be further advanced to ensure its safety and efficacy.

As the technology continues to advance, bioprinting will play a more important role in the field of obesity treatment. In the future, we can foresee using bioprinting to produce more precise and efficient obesity treatments, providing patients with more personalized and effective treatment options.

Reference materials:

1.http://m.jrj.com.cn/madapter/finance/2023/04/12183437470786.shtml

2. https://www.aspectbiosystems.com/technology

3. https://www.i3dpworld.com/application/view/5115

4.https://www.novonordisk.com.cn/content/dam/nncorp/cn/zh_cn/ir-materials/pdfs/2023/2023032701.pdf

5. doi:10.1038/nbt.2958