Novo (formerly called Novo Nordisk) and Orbis Medicines, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based company specializing in oral macrocycle drug discovery, have entered an agreement to discover and develop oral macrocycle therapeutics for cardiometabolic diseases, in a deal worth up to $1.4 billion (in undisclosed upfront and potential development and commercial milestone payments). Novo will also make an undisclosed strategic investment in Orbis Medicines.  

The collaboration will use Orbis Medicines’ proprietary ⁿGen platform, which is used for generating nCycles, a new class of fully synthetic macrocycle compounds optimized for oral bioavailability and membrane permeability. It consists of multiple proprietary integrated elements in a “lab in a loop” system starting with hit-finding libraries of 100 billion compounds and target specific libraries designed by generative AI. The automated chemistry-based nGen platform can synthesize and analyze up to 100,000 distinct synthetic macrocycles in weeks, according to Orbis, allowing the company to discover candidates with the right properties to enable oral dosing and intracellular targeting. 

Under the agreement, Orbis Medicines is eligible to receive up to $1.4 billion in upfront and potential development and commercial milestone payments, in addition to tiered royalties on future product sales.  

In addition, Novo announced that it has formed a collaboration with the high-tech and AI company, Anthropic, to help Novo accelerate the development of new medicines and advance AI-driven software development. The companies will jointly address key drug-discovery challenges identified by scientists and computational teams at Novo, develop targeted solutions for specific scientific challenges and workflows to support biological reasoning, and help accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines. As an initial aim, Novo will test Claude Science for specific workflows in R&D and address scientific problems where the joint capabilities of Novo and Anthropic are expected to have the greatest impact.   

In separate news, Novo Nordisk announced that it was rebranding its name to “Novo’ as part of a corporate and cultural strategy shift. The company said that it will provide a detailed overview of its updated corporate strategy, reflecting the rebranding at its Capital Markets Day on September 21. 

“Brand and culture work together: culture shapes how we reach our strategy and how we work, while brand shapes the value that people attach to our products and services, and how our company is perceived around the world,” said Tania Sabroe, Executive Vice President, People, Organization & Corporate Affairs, Novo, in a September 14, 2026, release. “Our updated culture will enable us to move with focus and speed, and our rebrand ensures we show up with relevance and distinctiveness across medicines, partnerships, marketing and stakeholder engagement. Together, these will sharpen our competitive edge and strengthen our role as a trusted partner in healthcare.” 

Source: Orbis Medicines