Novo Nordisk may be reorganizing its early-stage R&D capabilities, but the Danish pharma’s chief scientific officer has insisted that the changes aren’t primarily about laying off staff.
The new R&D structure, unveiled March 20, will be headed up by three so-called “therapy area units:” Diabetes, Obesity and MASH; Cardiovascular and Renal; and Rare Disease. The aim of these units is to “drive what innovation priorities we will explore,” according to a company spokesperson.
Below these three therapy area units are other teams with names like AI and Digital Innovation, and Strategy, Portfolio, Operations and Communication. These groups will be “responsible for execution with the ability to scale and adjust based on evolving needs,” the spokesperson said.
The new setup replaces a previous early-stage R&D structure that was spread across the company's Global Drug Discovery and Global Research Technologies teams, as well as a digital unit and a number of technology exploration units that aimed to integrate acquired tech such as Dicerna’s RNAi expertise.
While there was “nothing wrong” with the previous arrangement, it “wasn't the structure that really allowed us to have data and AI penetrate everything that we do,” Novo Nordisk’s CSO Marcus Schindler, Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech in an interview ahead of the announcement.
“What we're trying to achieve is a higher level of accountability for the therapy areas [so] that their own full portfolios, from end-to-end ideation to human outcomes, can access all the technologies that we're now integrating in a scalable unit,” Schindler said.
“We're now elevating the therapy areas, and giving particular emphasis—no surprise here—to diabetes and obesity,” the CSO added. “It has always been important, but we're now supporting it with even more resources.”
The vast majority of Novo Nordisk’s clinical-stage pipeline already slots clearly into these new therapy area units, but what about some of the company's less prominent programs like its early-stage Parkinson’s cell therapy or oncology work? “I think it’s fair to say they are not in the center of our therapy area strategy,” said Schindler, who added that the future of these programs would be decided on a case-by-case basis.
Schindler would not rule out layoffs down the line in relation to the reorganization, but he insisted that “this is not a reactive cost-cutting exercise to streamline workforce.”
“This is really to take us into the future, and I think we are still acting on a position of strength,” he said. “But, of course, we are also looking within the workforce into the new skills that will need to take us into the future.”
“So will there be capabilities and tasks that become at some point in time redundant? That is very likely because it is simply something that is now more in the past than it is in the future,” he added. “Will there be new roles and new job descriptions out there? Absolutely, so I think those are just hallmarks of a naturally evolving, forward-looking organization.”
Schindler was also keen to add that if any parts of Novo Nordisk's R&D capabilities are jettisoned in the future, “this will be smaller or minor elements of the business, rather than big chunks of what we're doing that we're no longer needing.”
News on the changes came the week after another phase 3 readout from Novo Nordisk’s next-gen weight loss therapy CagriSema underwhelmed investors. But Schindler pushed back on Fierce’s suggestion that the R&D reorganization was a reaction to the company’s struggles to line up a successor to its obesity blockbuster Wegovy.
“This journey started way before any of us actually knew what the outcome of CagriSema [was], and it actually, regardless of this outcome, tries to set up an organization for the future that takes us into the 2030s,” he explained.
When it comes to Novo Nordisk’s obesity strategy, Schindler said the company’s ambitions are more wide-ranging than “a reasonably narrow narrative about weight loss.”
“Don’t get me wrong, weight loss efficacy remains important and we're very committed to this,” he said.
“But … we are the ones sitting on the richest set of documented outcome trials and data to show us what a molecule can do in terms of touching a number of important organ systems and clinically relevant outcomes beyond weight loss and … even beyond some of the close comorbidities to obesity.”
In November, Marcus Schindler spoke to Fierce about the future of GLP-1s and Novo Nordisk's wider R&D strategy. Listen to the full podcast below: