Broad Institute team up with Novo Nordisk to find therapeutic targets for diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases by 2026
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (MA, USA) have announced their new research alliance with Novo Nordisk (Bagsværd, Denmark) as they aim to address the unmet critical clinical needs of those with diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases.
The collaboration of these two institutions will focus on advancing three programs – two aiming to identify drug targets for clinically important subtypes of Type 2 diabetes and one aiming to discover the genetic roots of cardiac fibrosis – over the next 3 years.
Todd Golub, director of the Broad Institute commented:
“Diabetes and cardiac fibrosis are two conditions in direct need of new therapies, […] These kinds of cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaborations that span both academia and industry are key to making the breakthroughs that patients all over the world need.”
Uli Stilz, head of Novo Nordisk’s Bio Innovation Hub (MA, USA) further stated:
“The conditions we’re exploring impact millions of people worldwide, […] Together, we’re able to leverage the full breadth of scientific expertise between our two organizations. This collaboration has the potential not only to accelerate our understanding of the diseases, but also potentially enable scientific advancements in disease-modifying interventions — a true game changer in addressing cardiometabolic diseases.”
The first two programs focused on therapeutic targets for diabetes aim to identify targets for both non-weight mediated insulin resistance and loss of beta cell function, as currently for both patient populations there are no safe and effective therapies for reversing disease. This collaboration will hopefully lead to treatments that will target both the symptoms and the cause of the disease. This alliance will use top-notch genetic and genomic methods to examine subtypes of diabetes and study the relationship between genes and potential therapeutic targets using large-scale cell screens.
Jose Florez, an institute member at the Broad Institute, where he directs the Diabetes Research Group, the chair of the Department of Medicine at MGH and the co-director of this new initiative commented on these diabetes programs:
“This is potentially transformative, […] Right now we have nothing that reverses diabetes. Addressing these processes at the root, rather than simply treating the symptoms, would really change how we treat this disease.”
The program focused on cardiac fibrosis will investigate its role in heart disease through genetics, genomics and machine learning. The program’s team aim is to identify and validate genes that might potentially serve as therapeutic targets to help inhibit or reverse fibrosis – another condition that has few effective therapies.
Patrick Ellinor, interim chief of cardiology and co-director of the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center at MGH (MA, USA), institute member and director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute and co-director of the alliance as well as director of the cardiac portion remarked:
“I think this will be a framework for future investigation into the cardiometabolic space.”
Florez further commented on this:
“This is a real convergence of vision, […] Novo Nordisk has decades of experience in drug development, and we at the Broad are leaders in genetics and understand the clinical space. We look forward to leveraging resources generated by the community to produce what’s really needed for treating these diseases.”
Source: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard press release, www.broadinstitute.org/news/broad-institute-mit-and-harvard-announces-new-research-alliance-novo-nordisk-identify
