Drug Giant Novo Nordisk to Acquire Dicerna for $3.3 Billion

Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of investigational ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) therapeutics, is being acquired by Danish drug giant Novo Nordisk for $38.25 per share in cash, which represents a total equity value of $3.3 billion and a premium of 80% to Dicerna’s closing price on November 17, 2021.

Dicerna’s RNAi technology platform enables access to intracellular disease targets across hepatic and extrahepatic cell and tissue types, complementing Novo Nordisk’s existing technology platforms. This acquisition supports Novo Nordisk’s strategy of developing and applying a broad range of technology platforms across all Novo Nordisk therapeutic areas.

Novo Nordisk and Dicerna have been parties to a research collaboration since 2019 to discover and develop RNAi therapies using Dicerna’s proprietary GalXC RNAi platform technology. The collaboration between Novo Nordisk and Dicerna encompassed the exploration of more than 30 liver cell targets with the potential to deliver multiple clinical candidates for disorders including chronic liver disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and rare diseases. Novo Nordisk expects to initiate clinical development of the first investigational RNAi therapeutic to emerge from this collaboration in 2022.

Ribonucleic acid interference, or RNAi, provides a unique advantage to other disease inhibitor technologies, like small-molecule pharmaceuticals or monoclonal antibodies. Instead of targeting proteins after they have been produced and released, RNAi silences the genes themselves via the specific destruction of the messenger RNA (mRNA) made from the gene. Rather than seeking to inhibit a protein, the RNAi approach can prevent a disease-causing protein’s creation, directly impacting disease manifestation. (Source: Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Website, 18 November, 2021)