E-theraputics has signed an extension to its existing research collaboration with Novo Nordisk in the type II diabetes space, which uses the company’s proprietary Network-Driven Drug Discovery (NDD) platform to discover potentially novel biological mechanisms and therapeutic approaches for a specific area of the condition.

Under the amended agreement, e-therapeutics will now also use its new Genome-Associated Interaction Networks (GAINs) technology to analyse population genomics data from patients, making it the first research agreement for e-therapeutics’ new and novel functional genomics technology.

The amendment extends the original contract by six months to June 2020 and will also allow further work to be performed using e-therapeutics’ NDD technology.

Dr Ray Barlow, CEO at e-therapeutics, said that the company is “very pleased that Novo Nordisk, a global leader in diabetes care and innovation, has chosen to extend our original agreement. In addition to extending the original contract, this marks the first deal on our new “GAINs” functional genomics technology in a hugely important disease area.

We are really excited by the potential of GAINs to greatly improve the understanding of complex diseases, identify previously unknown disease processes and pathways and facilitate the discovery of new drugs.”

The terms and conditions of the original agreement remain in place, the companies confirmed that Novo Nordisk has the option to license relevant IP generated under the collaboration and any future license would require mutual agreement of commercial terms.