Novo Nordisk inks $3.3 billion deal for Dicerna Pharma

Novo Nordisk will acquire Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharma company focused on the development of investigational ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) therapeutics, 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 Nov. 17. The deal is expected to close in Q4 of 2021.

Since 2019, Novo Nordisk and Dicerna have been a part of a research collaboration to discover and develop RNAi therapies using Dicerna’s proprietary GalXC RNAi platform technology. The partnership between the two parties features the exploration of more than 30 liver cell targets with the possibility to deliver multiple clinical candidates for disorders including chronic liver disease, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), type 2 diabetes, obesity and rare diseases. Novo Nordisk expects to begin clinical development of the first investigational RNAi therapeutic to emerge from this collaboration in 2022.

“The acquisition of Dicerna accelerates Novo Nordisk’s research within RNAi and expands the usage of the RNAi technology,” says Marcus Schindler, Novo Nordisk’s executive vice president and chief scientific officer. “We build on our successful collaboration, and by combining Dicerna’s state-of-the-art RNAi drug engine and intracellular delivery with our deep capabilities in disease biology understanding and tissue targeting through peptides and proteins, we have the potential to expand our pipeline.”