Speaking on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Novo business development executive Tamara Darsow said the company is gunning for obesity and diabetes assets.
Novo Nordisk’s business development team had 200 meetings at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, a staggering figure as the Danish pharma tries to get back into the game after a messy bidding war over Metsera in the fall.
“[Metsera] was a company that was very interesting to us and very complimentary to what we do. Of course, we wanted it. We were sorry to see it go,” Tamara Darsow, senior vice president, global business development, told BioSpace on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Wednesday. “But it also was, from our perspective, a bit of financial discipline and there was a limit to what we were willing to pay for it.”
So it’s onward and upward for Darsow and her team. Novo is also reforming its business development strategy under new CEO Mike Maziar Doustdar, who is seeking to transform the 103-year-old Danish company into a modern pharma giant.
“As with any time when there’s a leadership change, there’s some strategic thinking and some changes that come,” Darsow said. “I think we have some very good clarity now on what that looks like moving forward, and so that that gives us a lot of confidence on how to execute in 2026.”
Not historically known as an acquirer, Novo began to earn a new reputation last year with—of course—the Metsera battle, but also successful deals helped showcase Doustdar’s new style. The company acquired Akero Therapeutics for $5.2 billion in October, tucking in a metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) therapy to the pipeline.
Acknowledging the rise of M&A for Novo, Darsow said her team is “relatively agnostic” about deal structure, noting simply that the buys made sense becuase the acquired companies fit nicely into the pipeline. The company has also signed a slew of licensing deals, including a partnership with China’s United Laboratories in March for a triple agonist of the GLP-1, GIP and glucagon receptors. The weight loss deal included $200 million upfront and up to $1.8 billion on the back end in milestones.
Novo is hyperfocused on finding additional obesity and diabetes assets, Darsow said. She’s particularly excited about finding new novel mechanisms for the diseases and improving tolerability or dosing. In diabetes, she flagged insulin sensitizers and beta cell preservation as technologies she is keen to find.
Semaglutide, Novo’s GLP-1, changed the way diabetes is treated for millions of people. Darsow said there’s still more to do in the weight loss space, despite a crowded market and dozens of biotechs offering options. That’s a good thing, according to Darsow. She remembers a time when there wasn’t a lot of choice for Novo.
“Five years ago, if you were looking for novel obesity companies, they were few and far between. Now we see this huge expansion of interest and investments in this area,” Darsow said. “I think that is just good for the entire industry and the entire ecosystem.”
Novo is the ideal partner in obesity, Darsow said, because of the “tremendous amount of expertise” it has developed with semaglutide and a pipeline of next-gen assets.
Besides obesity and diabetes, Darsow said Novo is looking to pick up some rare disease assets. The company has an interest in rare blood diseases as well as diseases that are complications of obesity that could be complimentary to the existing portfolio. Akero is an example of the latter strategy.
Darsow is pleased that Novo’s recent dealmaking has run the gamut from early to late stage. She also noted that the company has a scouting team in China looking at new obesity assets.
While the Danish pharma’s bid for Metsera was unsuccessful, Darsow said it did show the industry that Novo is willing to fight hard for what it wants.
“We need to know what we want and move with intention and expect competition,” she said.
