Zealand Bets up to $2.5B in Metabolic Pact With Chinese Biotech

 

Also on Thursday, Zealand held its Capital Markets Day in London, outlining the strategy for its weight management franchise in the near-term, including launching five products by 2030.

Already one of the leading biotechs in the obesity space, Zealand Pharma has teamed up with China’s OTR Therapeutics to advance next-generation drugs for the condition and other metabolic disorders in a partnership worth up to $2.5 billion.

The back-heavy deal involves a $20 million upfront payment from Zealand, which could increase to $30 million under certain unspecified conditions. OTR Therapeutics will be eligible for preclinical, development, regulatory and sales milestones that could hit up to $2.5 billion, the bulk of which will come from the partnership’s potential commercial performance. The Chinese biotech will also receive tiered single-digit royalties on worldwide net sales of any product under the agreement that reaches the market.

The deal marks an expansion into oral small-molecule therapeutics for Zealand, but keeps the biotech within molecular targets where it already has experiense, Chief Scientific Officer Utpal Singh said in a statement.

In exchange for the investment, Zealand will be able to leverage OTR’s proprietary small-molecule platform to advance novel therapies for several metabolic disease targets. The partners did not say which indications they plan to prioritize, though Singh in his statement noted that the agreement is in line with the company’s strategy to bring new treatment options to “people who are overweight, with obesity, and other metabolic diseases.”

Zealand already has two powerhouse partners behind it, securing the biotech’s place as a leader in the obesity space. In March this year, Roche fronted $1.65 billion and promised up to $3.6 billion in milestones to partner with the Danish biotech and gain the right to co-develop and co-commercialize the amylin analog petrelintide for weight loss. Zealand’s presence in the metabolic disease space stretches as far back as 2011, when Boehringer Ingelheim took notice of survodutide (then called ZP2929), a dual-acting agonist of the GLP-1 and glucagon receptors.

Zealand anticipates two late-stage topline readouts for survodutide in the front half of 2026, while petrelintide will deliver Phase II data next year.

Also on Thursday, Zealand held its Capital Markets Day in London, outlining the strategy for its weight management franchise in the near-term, with an eye toward becoming a leader in the metabolic health space in the coming years.

To achieve this goal, Zealand will work to speed its discovery and development process such that by 2030, the company will be able to launch five products and build a “robust” pipeline of more than 10 investigational therapies.

“We are redefining weight management for a new era,” CEO Adam Steensberg said in a statement, “moving beyond the weight loss Olympics toward solutions that support the everyday needs, aspirations, and overall well-being of people living with overweight, obesity, and metabolic imbalance.”

https://www.biospace.com/business/zealand-bets-up-to-2-5b-in-metabolic-pact-with-chinese-biotech