Orbis CEO on turning biologics into pills

This week on The Pharma Letter Podcast, we’re joined by Morten Graugaard, chief executive of Orbis Medicines: a Danish-Swiss biotech working to turn biologic-like medicines into oral therapies.

Founded out of Novo Holdings’ company creation work, Orbis is developing a platform for oral macrocycles, aiming to tackle one of drug development’s stubborn problems: how to make complex, powerful molecules work as pills.
The company’s nGen platform combines high-throughput macrocycle chemistry with computational design, with the goal of moving beyond slow, bespoke discovery toward a more programmable approach.

Orbis has attracted strong backing from life sciences investors, including Novo Holdings, Forbion, NEA and Lilly Ventures, and raised a 90 million euro Series A in 2025 to advance its platform and pipeline.

Mr Graugaard brings the perspective of both an operator and an investor, having previously worked at Novo Holdings on life sciences investing, R&D strategy and company creation.

In this episode, we discuss the shift from injectable biologics to oral therapies, the scientific hurdles still facing the field, what pharma companies are looking for in next-generation oral medicines, and how investor appetite is changing for ambitious platform biotechs.