Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced Novo Nordisk A/S has nominated its first candidate under the existing agreement between the two companies for the discovery and development of novel therapies for the treatment of liver-related cardiometabolic diseases using Dicerna’s proprietary GalXC™ RNAi platform technology. Under the agreement, Dicerna is eligible to receive $25 million annually for each of the first three years contingent on delivering to Novo RNAi molecules for a defined number of targets. Dicerna met this obligation in 2020. In addition, Dicerna earned a $2.5 million milestone in December 2020 associated with nomination of the first development candidate. The collaboration between Novo and Dicerna, which closed in late December 2019, encompasses the exploration of more than 30 liver cell targets with the potential to deliver multiple clinical candidates for disorders including chronic liver disease, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), type 2 diabetes, obesity and rare diseases. Dicerna is conducting discovery and preclinical development up to candidate selection for each liver cell target, and Novo is responsible for further development. The agreement enables each company to co-develop and co-commercialize product candidates discovered in the collaboration. Novo is leading programs targeting cardiometabolic disorders and other indications with Dicerna having the right to opt in to two programs during clinical development. Dicerna retains rights to initiate two new orphan liver disease programs for which Novo can opt in. For all co-development programs, the companies will share in the profit/loss of net sales of products consistent with each company’s contribution to co-development costs. For programs to which Dicerna does not opt in, Dicerna is eligible to receive up to $357.5 million per target in development, regulatory and commercialization milestone payments, plus tiered royalties on product sales ranging from the mid-single-digits to mid-teens.