Operational expansion will support acceleration of portfolio of first-in-class oral macrocycle drugs for major indications
Globally experienced executive team to be based at Copenhagen site
Orbis Medicines, a leader in oral macrocycle drug discovery, today announced a significant expansion of its operations and capabilities by establishing itself at Symbion's new biotech hub in Fuglebakken, Copenhagen. Symbion is Denmark's largest start-up ecosystem. The site will host further R&D personnel and executive team members, complementing Orbis' existing location in Lausanne, Switzerland. This rapid growth is part of the company's strategic plan to deepen its leadership in oral macrocycle drug discovery and accelerate development of a portfolio of first-in-class medicines.
The location will provide Orbis with access to world-leading peptide chemistry discovery expertise fostered by multinational pharma and biotech companies headquartered in Copenhagen. As a company incorporating AI/machine learning into its platform, Orbis will also benefit from the recently announced Danish Centre for AI Innovation which will provide access to a world-class supercomputer, Gefion.
"Orbis is proud to continue expanding its footprint and team with world-class scientific talent as we work on a new generation of oral macrocycle candidates," said Morten Døssing, Executive Chair of the Orbis Board and Partner at Novo Holdings. "Copenhagen is renowned for its amenities and high standard of living, and as a prior Novo Nordisk HQ, the Fuglebakken location already has a rich history of innovation appropriate for the next phase of our growth."
Following its recent seed financing provided by major life sciences investors Novo Holdings and Forbion, Orbis has been investing in its field-leading oral macrocycle design and development platform, nGen. The Orbis pipeline initially includes programs against targets validated by blockbuster biologic drugs, with the goal of providing oral alternatives that will enable the treatment of many more patients. Macrocycles are a large and diverse family of compounds with highly desirable therapeutic properties, including structural flexibility that gives them the potential to address a very wide range of diseases. nCycles are systematically designed by the automated synthesis and testing platform, nGen, to be orally bioavailable and membrane permeable, solving decades-long challenges in macrocycle drug design.
The new Orbis site will hire more than 15 experienced technical professionals to advance activities in platform chemistry, screening biology, computational chemistry (leveraging AI/machine learning and generative design), translational biology, advanced chemistry macrocycle design, and drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (DMPK) research. Global recruitment for experienced drug development executives is underway.
About Orbis Medicines
Orbis Medicines is a biotechnology company focused on pioneering a new era for oral macrocycle drug discovery. Macrocycles are a large and diverse family of compounds with highly desirable therapeutic properties. Orbis' nGen platform is designed to systematically explore the macrocycle chemical space using a highly automated chemistry platform and deliver oral macrocycle drug candidates nCycles suitable for both intra- and extracellular targets. Orbis' programs are focused on high-value oral alternatives to blockbuster biologic drugs and targets challenging for established modalities. Orbis was founded by Novo Holdings. For more information, please visit: www.orbismedicines.com
About nGen
nGen is Orbis' technology platform for generating oral macrocycle drug candidates, which it calls nCycles. It consists of multiple proprietary integrated elements starting with hit finding libraries of 100 billion compounds. Hits identified are progressed using Orbis' highly automated chemistry-based platform that rapidly creates and tests hundreds of thousands of individual analogues with a full suite of assays to identify the most desirable ones. The scale and quality of the data produced from these real compounds, paired with machine learning, creates an industry-leading platform that de-risks and accelerates development. Recently published research in Nature Chemical Biology demonstrates nGen's ability to deliver nCycles that are orally bioavailable, marking a new era for macrocycle drug discovery.
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