Salute e Benessere
Novo Holdings Participates in €90 Million Series A Financing Round for Orbis Medicines to Support Development of Oral Macrocycle Drugs
Novo Holdings Partner, Morten Graugaard , to lead Orbis as CEO
COPENHAGEN , Denmark , Jan. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Novo Holdings today announced its participation in a €90 million Series A financing for Orbis Medicines. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from new investors including Eli Lilly and Company, Cormorant, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark , alongside existing investors Novo Holdings and Forbion. Morten Graugaard , Partner at Novo Holdings, has been appointed the Chief Executive Officer of Orbis Medicines following nearly three years serving as Executive Chair of its Board of Directors.
Orbis was founded in 2021 by the Seed Investments team of Novo Holdings to pioneer a new era for oral macrocycle drug discovery and build on the ground-breaking science developed by Professor Christian Heinis and Sevan Habeshian at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). João Ribas, Principal, Novo Holdings , and Morten Graugaard provided highly collaborative operational management and strategic guidance, exemplifying the team's active, hands-on approach to venture creation.
Macrocycles are a large and diverse family of compounds with highly desirable therapeutic properties. However, developing these compounds as oral drugs has historically been a significant challenge. Orbis is focused on using its leading Gen platform to generate high-value oral alternatives to blockbuster biologic drugs and targets to maximize value for patients.
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Orbis Medicines is pioneering a new era for oral macrocycle drug discovery. Its Gen platform systematically delivers macrocycle candidates, termed Cycles. These are optimized for oral bioavailability, which has historically hindered therapeutic development of this versatile class of molecules. Orbis' pipeline is initially focused on Cycle candidates against targets validated by blockbuster biologic drugs delivered by injection. In 2024, Orbis raised a EUR 26 million series seed round co-led by Novo Holdings and Forbion. Proof-of-concept of Orbis' work has been published in . The company is located in Copenhagen, Denmark and Lausanne, Switzerland . For more information, please visit: www.orbismedicines.com .
Novo Holdings is a holding and investment company that is responsible for managing the assets and the wealth of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The purpose of Novo Holdings is to improve people's health and the sustainability of society and the planet by generating attractive long-term returns on the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Novo Holdings is the controlling shareholder of Novo Nordisk A/S and Novonesis A/S (Novozymes A/S) and manages an investment portfolio with a long-term return perspective. In addition to managing a broad portfolio of equities, bonds, real estate, infrastructure and private equity assets, Novo Holdings is a world-leading life sciences investor. Through its Seed, Venture, Growth, Asia , Planetary Health and Principal Investments teams, Novo Holdings invests in life science companies at all stages of development. As of year-end 2023, Novo Holdings had total assets of EUR 149 billion . www.novoholdings.dk
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