Novo Nordisk Announces Major Investment

Major Investment from Novo Nordisk Novo Nordisk, one of the world's pharmaceutical companies with the highest R&D investment, is contributing EUR 750 million towards expanding production facilities and R&D capacity, which will enable the company to introduce new innovations to the healthcare sector and meet patients' future demands. Novo Nordisk Turkey Vice President and General Manager Jens Pii Olesen shared recent developments regarding Novo Nordisk's global investments' contributions to Turkey and the company's leading activities in the sector during a press conference held on 7 December. Novo Nordisk, managed by the world's largest foundation, provides innovative treatments worldwide in the fields of diabetes, obesity and rare diseases. The Denmark-based global healthcare company ranks among the world's top 10 pharmaceutical companies by market value. As the first healthcare company to introduce insulin pens to humanity, Novo Nordisk supplies 50% of the world's total insulin. More than 34 million people worldwide use Novo Nordisk's diabetes products. Operating with approximately 53,000 employees across 80 countries, Novo Nordisk makes its products available to patients in approximately 170 countries. With over 100 years of experience, Novo Nordisk aims to bring about change to overcome serious chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, rare blood and endocrine diseases. To achieve this, Novo Nordisk, which makes leading scientific breakthroughs in its focused treatment areas, Vice President and General Manager Jens Pii Olesen shared recent developments about the company's leading activities in the sector during a press conference held on 7 December: "We have 17 production centers worldwide, along with the world's largest insulin production facility in Kalunborg, Denmark. Novo Nordisk's EUR 750 million investment plans include expanding current production facilities and establishing a new factory. With this investment, additional R&D capacity will be created for the production of new active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) to be used in Novo Nordisk's global clinical studies. This expansion will provide Novo Nordisk with important capacity for developing its future oral and injectable product portfolio. Increasing our API capacity in R&D will help us introduce new innovations to the healthcare sector and meet our patients' future demands," he said.

Novo Nordisk Turkey Ranks Among Top 5 in R&D Investments

Novo Nordisk has been operating in Turkey since 1995 with approximately 300 employees. Olesen, highlighting that Novo Nordisk holds an important position in its global operations and in Turkey, shared the company's successful performance: "Beyond the scale of operations conducted in Turkey, the office also has strategic importance. The organization, whose largest region is BAMEAC (Middle East, Africa and Commonwealth of Independent States region), serves 1.3 billion people across 73 countries and is managed from Istanbul by a team of 50 people. Novo Nordisk Turkey office's successful performance over the years brought it to this position. Due to these successes, Novo Nordisk Turkey has become a talent pool for the global company; recently, 9 Turkish executives were appointed to global positions at once," he said.

Novo Nordisk Will Use Artificial Intelligence in Treatment Development Through Microsoft Collaboration

Novo Nordisk, among the world's pharmaceutical companies with the highest R&D investment, allocates 12% of its global revenues annually to R&D to address diseases such as hemophilia and type 1 diabetes with innovative treatments. The company has more than 70 collaborations worldwide for its R&D activities. Novo Nordisk is currently working on treatment methods for the next 30 years in 17 different areas, primarily obesity, diabetes and rare diseases. Novo Nordisk emphasizes the use of advanced technology in disease treatment to create greater impact, conducting strategic acquisitions and collaborations. Dr. Ömer Buğra Bahadır, Senior Director of Clinical, Medical and Regulatory Affairs at Novo Nordisk Turkey, shared recent developments in this direction as follows: "As Novo Nordisk, our goal is to provide integrated solutions in the treatment of rare diseases and completely eliminate diseases. In this direction, we continue to strengthen our presence in rare diseases by acquiring Forma Therapeutics, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on transforming the lives of patients living with rare blood diseases. With this acquisition, we aim to advance the sickle cell disease program one step further and create a portfolio that will be pioneering in treating the disease. We emphasize the use of advanced technology so that more people can benefit from treatments. This is very important for our ability to create greater impact in disease treatment in the future. In this sense, we have established a collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate drug discovery and development work through the use of big data and artificial intelligence. As a result of this strategic collaboration, Microsoft's IT services, cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) will be combined with Novo Nordisk's drug discovery, development and data science capabilities. Microsoft's AI technology, along with fundamental scientific models, will provide expertise to Novo Nordisk." "Novo Nordisk Turkey ranks among the top 5 Novo Nordisk companies by the scale of R&D activities. However, by the scale of R&D investments, we also rank among the top 5 pharmaceutical companies in Turkey. Novo Nordisk Turkey Regional Clinical Research Center holds significant importance in the global world. Clinical research for 5 countries in the SEEMEA (Southeast Europe, Middle East and Africa) Region is managed from Turkey.

Future Scientists Summer Camp: Novo Nordisk Brings High School Youth Together with Science in Denmark in Its 100th Year

Novo Nordisk, celebrating its 100th anniversary next year, will host 100 high school students from different countries around the world at the "Future Scientists Camp" in Denmark in August 2023. Ten youth from Turkey will also participate in this camp. For one week, 100 students from around the world will come together to explore topics such as health, sustainability and cutting-edge science, particularly focusing on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education.