COPENHAGEN: Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, the world’s leading insulin maker, said Thursday it will buy US-based Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a developer of RNA interference technology which targets genes that cause disease. The two firms have already been working together for years to use RNAi therapies to treat liver disease, type-2 diabetes and obesity, among other maladies.

“The acquisition of Dicerna’s ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) platform is a strategic addition to Novo Nordisk’s existing research technology platforms,” the Danish company said in a statement.

Dicerna develops “RNAi-based therapies to selectively silence genes that cause or contribute to disease,” it added. Novo Nordisk chief scientific officer Marcus Schindler said that with Dicerna “we have the potential to expand our pipeline and deliver life-changing precision medicines for people living with chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease...”