Denmark's Novo Nordisk A/S has divested a portfolio of drug candidates being developed to treat metabolic disorders to privately held US-based clinical-stage pharmaceutical company TransTech Pharma for an undisclosed sum.

This portfolio comprises of three distinct therapeutic approaches to such treatment: H3 receptor antagonists, PPARd agonists and 11ßHSD1 inhibitors.

In January 2007 Novo Nordisk, global leader in diabetic care, took a strategic decision to focus all its research and development resources on its growing pipeline of protein-based pharmaceuticals, and divested all existing preclinical and clinical small-molecule projects to TransTech to develop these three programmes.

The Dutch firm has earlier worked closely with TransTech on novel drug development.

"We are very pleased to place our programmes in such good hands. We have previously partnered with TransTech, and know that TransTech has the capability to effectively and expeditiously proceed with the further development of these programmes," said Novo Nordisk executive vice president and chief scientific officer Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen. "This allows us to focus our R&D efforts on therapeutic proteins while keeping a financial stake in the programmes as a TransTech shareholder."

TransTech's current diabetes and obesity portfolio includes orally administered and novel therapeutic development candidates targeting PTP1b inhibitors, AgRP inhibitors, GLP1R agonists, AMPK activators and glucokinase activators. Now, with the addition of the three Novo Nordisk programmes, TransTech is engaged in 11 clinical and preclinical programmes in this area.

"We are extremely pleased to have prevailed in the acquisition process and to add these programmes to our robust diabetes and obesity portfolio," said Adnan Mjalli, PhD, TransTech's founder, chairman and chief executive officer. "We are confident that all three programmes represent promising approaches to addressing unmet medical needs. These additions to the pipeline will allow TransTech to become a world leader in the discovery and development of novel treatments for diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders."

Dr Mjalli adds "TransTech Pharma is in a unique position to potentially treat metabolic disorders through novel, multifaceted therapeutic approaches that address obesity, hepatic glucose output, insulin resistance, beta cell preservation, dyslipidaemia and microvascular complications,".

Despite the enormous investment in the discovery of new therapeutics for metabolic disorders, more than 84 per cent of all people with diabetes have an uncontrolled disease and one in three Americans born in 2000 are expected to develop the disease and experience its range of harmful symptoms and side effects.

TransTech high-throughput drug discovery platform, Translational Technology translates the functional modulation of human proteins into safe and effective medicines. It has a pipeline of small molecule clinical and pre-clinical drug candidates for the treatment of a wide range of human diseases including cardiovascular disorders, central nervous system disorders, type I/II diabetes, obesity and cancer. For

Apaprt from diabetes, Novo Nordisk has a leading position in areas of haemostasis management, growth hormone therapy and hormone replacement therapy.