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A rooftop deck at Variant Bio’s Seattle offices have a view of the city’s landmark Space Needle. (Cory Parris Photo)
Variant Bio today announced a partnership with Novo Nordisk for disease research and development that could total $50 million for the biotech startup.
The Seattle company is working with genetically diverse populations around the world in the pursuit of new drug therapies. The company has built a platform that uses statistical genetics and machine learning to identify the most promising treatments.
The multi-year collaboration with Novo Nordisk is focused on using genomic information in treating metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes.
Most research on the role of genetics in disease has focused on people with European ancestry, said David Moller, Variant’s chief scientist. Variant is partnering with Indigenous peoples worldwide to build more representative data sets.
“We hope that a deeper understanding of the relationships between genetic variation and metabolic traits will yield novel targets and ultimately lead to better and more diverse treatment options for people around the globe,” Moller said in a statement.
Variant launched in 2018 and has raised $130 million from investors.
Variant’s website explains that it “was created from the ground up with ethics at its foundation and is committed to partnering with individuals, communities, and researchers around the world in a way that respects the privacy, beliefs, cultures, and data of study participants.”
Integral to Variant’s work is a benefit-sharing program that provides communities with financial support and access to potential health treatments in compensation for the use of their genomic information.
Historically, when researchers and companies have used genomic information from underrepresented populations, the communities have received little to no direct benefits for sharing their biological identities.
So the company has pledged that when it develops treatments, it will provide them at a reasonable price to the communities that contributed genomic data used in the R&D.
It also enters into agreements with communities to spend 10% of a study budget, or a maximum of $100,000 per project, on programs benefiting the partners, such as support for local health, environment, education and culture-related initiatives. Variant additionally provides annual grants totaling 4% of its net revenue to partnering communities, and it has a provision for sharing the proceeds should the company be acquired or go public.
Stephane Castel, Variant’s co-founder and chief technologist, hailed the deal with Novo Nordisk as an important next step in the evolution of the 40-person startup.
“Partnering with one of the most experienced metabolic disease drug discovery teams gives us the opportunity to translate our genetic findings into treatments that will have a real world impact,” Castel said.
