Despite signing a deal potentially worth $2.1 billion, Vivtex Therapeutics CEO Thomas von Erlach, Ph.D., refuses to rest on his laurels. While the biotech may be best known for its high-profile oral delivery partnership, the company is advancing several R&D efforts of its own while taking up a new space and growing its headcount.
Vivtex signed a deal in February with Novo Nordisk to help the Big Pharma advance next-gen oral metabolic medicines. The Boston biotech’s ability to map the gastrointestinal tract to optimize oral therapeutic absorption has made it a newly sought-after partner for drugmakers aiming to develop oral metabolic and autoimmune therapies.
In an interview in March, von Erlach told Fierce Biotech that while the Novo collaboration is a major milestone, it is not the company’s end goal.
The collaboration is one of several Vivtex has in the works, but it is the first—and so far only—public partnership for the company, which spun out of the MIT lab of Robert Langer, Ph.D. These partnerships have enabled Vivtex to reach profitability early, avoiding a large fundraise and any debt. Without pressure from investors, the company has greater flexibility in how it grows, the CEO said.
Guiding growth
Although Vivtex was already planning to expand its footprint prior to the Novo deal, the partnership helped solidify its move out of its Dorchester incubator into a 10,000-square-foot space in Cambridge, with room to expand into additional floors. The Boston Globe reported last month that there is still 16 million square feet of lab space available in Boston, and while the vacancies are a headache for developers, the oversupply has allowed growing companies like Vivtex to take advantage of lower rents.
Alongside the move, von Erlach said Vivtex is poised to nearly double its headcount, bringing its total to just under 40 employees across Boston and Switzerland. While the Novo partnership is driving some of the new roles, the company remains focused on strengthening its platform and developing proprietary drug candidates independent of that deal.
With several revenue-generating partnerships and a potentially blockbuster deal with Novo, Vivtex could reasonably lean into its specialty in oral therapeutics and maximize profits through additional collaborations.
But von Erlach said an aggressive partnership strategy is not in the company’s DNA.
“We don't want an army of salespeople, and we’re not a service provider,” he told Fierce. “In our case, these partnerships take years, and there are only so many we can do. We don’t need to go out there and try to drum up as many partnerships as possible. We have a more scientific mindset and want to focus on our R&D work.”
Von Erlach believes the company’s long-term value lies in helping early-stage companies engineer drug candidates while also advancing its own programs, rather than limiting itself to delivery technologies for existing medicines.
With that focus, Vivtex is currently working on eight partnered R&D programs, including its most advanced asset in a phase 1 trial for autoimmune conditions—the rest span metabolic and autoimmune candidates in research and preclinical stages. The company also has two internal programs in early research with undisclosed indications.
Pill power
The Vivtex CEO envisages the future of oral therapeutics being driven by commercial demand in competitive fields. After a wave of blockbuster injectable launches in obesity and Type 2 diabetes, those markets are increasingly seeing advances from oral rivals, notably with the launch of Novo’s Wegovy pill and Eli Lilly’s orforglipron.
Beyond obesity, von Erlach sees autoimmune disorders, genetic therapies, and orphan diseases—many of which currently require infusions—as key opportunities for oral treatment advances.
Besides added convenience, von Erlach emphasized the potential for oral therapeutics to improve medication adherence and effectiveness. Overcoming the digestive tract’s defenses and improving absorption could reduce the amount of active pharmaceutical ingredient required, making treatments both more efficient and potentially more cost-effective.
“You spend decades to come up with a new drug, and it takes so much to get to the finish line. Then the drug is not as effective because people are not taking it the right way,” he said. “Improving adherence represents a huge upside for the entire healthcare system and ultimately for patients, especially for conditions that require chronic dosing.”
Von Erlach is focused on ensuring the company’s early success translates into a robust organization with the capabilities to screen, discover, develop and engineer the next generation of oral therapeutics.
“It would allow us not to be limited to being just a drug delivery company, but to open the door to engineering new drugs that are designed from the outset to be more amenable to oral delivery,” von Erlach said. “That’s the key we have today—and we’re still at the beginning.”