Novozymes Biopharma Announces Major Collaboration With Janssen


Novozymes Biopharma, part of Novozymes A/S, a world leader in bioinnovation, has recently announced a collaboration with Janssen Research & Development, LLC (Janssen). The agreement will enable Janssen to evaluate Novozymes Biopharma’s engineered albumin-based VELTIS technology for potential drug candidates.

“We are delighted to be working with Janssen on this important collaboration,” said Svend Licht, Senior Director, Novozymes Biopharma. “The VELTIS half-life extension technology can be linked to a broad range of drug candidates and the agreement is central in our continued strategy to demonstrate its potential to facilitate greater control across many therapeutic fields.”

Novozymes’ VELTIS technology represents a series of engineered human albumins which, in combination with a drug candidate, offers the potential for tunable control of the therapeutic half-life. The extended half-life of the albumins opens the door toward reducing the dosing frequency of drugs from daily to every 2 weeks or monthly.

“The VELTIS platform is a transformative technology that offers real potential to revolutionize the delivery of treatments,” said Mr. Licht. “Working with partners across a wide-range of medical conditions, we are continuing to highlight the benefits of the solution in improving the lives of patients.”

Together with this new collaboration, Novozymes Biopharma announces a new brand name for its half-life extension platform. Now known as VELTIS, the technology enhances the pharmacokinetics of peptide and protein drugs, potentially reducing dosing frequency of therapeutics to once-per-month, while contributing additional benefits through decreased dosage levels and reduced toxicity. For more information, visit www.biopharma.novozymes.com.

Novozymes is the world leader in bioinnovation. Together with customers across a broad array of industries, they create tomorrow’s industrial biosolutions, improving their customers’ business and the use of our planet’s resources. Novozymes Biopharma develops and manufactures high-quality, safe, biological-based ingredients and technologies to provide pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers the knowledge-based solutions needed to address the challenges in developing innovative, safer, and more consistent final products. By combining their unique knowledge around recombinant albumin, half-life extension, and hyaluronic acid with the specific application knowledge of their customers, Novozymes is committed to working with companies to deliver improved performance and safety for next-generation of medical device and pharmaceutical products. For more information, visit www.novozymes.com.