Novo Targets Oral Obesity Boost with Vivtex

Novo Nordisk announced a collaboration with a start-up, Vivtex, which gives access to technologies that could yield new oral biologics for obesity and other medical diseases. It has partnered with Vivtex, a biotech firm co-founded by MIT professor Robert Langer, to develop oral therapies for obesity and diabetes. This collaboration aims to transform injectable obesity drugs into pills.

Boston biotechnology start-up stands to gain as much as $2.1 billion, if the drug emerges from alliance progress and is eventually commercialised.

Biologics are typically delivered through injection or intravenous infusions. These drugs are hard to pack into pills due to their large size and difficulty getting through the stomach and digestive tract. As technology is transforming with the digital era, companies, along with technical advancement helping to make reliable progress.

The Danish pharmaceutical firm brought the first oral biologic, the diabetes drug Rybelsus, to market in 2019. The U.S. regulator in 2025 handed the company approval for an oral form of its obesity medicine Wegovy.

Novo Nordisk has been in front for innovation in protein and peptide. Senior Vice President of Therapeutic Discovery for Novo said, we continue to push boundaries of science through internal and external innovation to fulfil the mission of treating people with obesity and diabetes.

Novo has been struggling to regain its footprint in obesity rival Eli Lilly, but it did beat Lilly to market with a GLP-1 pill in January. Analysts were pleased with the update on Novo’s Wegovy pill.

The GI tract is a complex system designed by evolution to be selective about what chemicals are being let into the body and what chemicals are not being let into the body.

Von Erlach said, a roster of collaborators that also includes pacts with Astellas Pharma, Equillium, and Orbis Medicines. “We really see still a big untapped opportunity in further expanding our partnerships”.