Nortiva Bio Launches, Developing Long-Acting Oral Medicines Via Proprietary Platform

Editor’s Take: Company executives believe long-acting oral medicines have potential to transform patient health management.

Nortiva Bio is launching as a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing long-acting oral medicines using a proprietary drug delivery platform. The company will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Innoviva.

Nortiva’s platform, Lynx, may transform daily pills into single-dose oral therapies, across multiple therapeutic areas, lasting up to a month. Innoviva acquired Lynx from Lyndra Therapeutics in 2025.

Nortiva Working on Oral Contraceptive

Right now, Nortiva’s lead asset is a once-monthly oral contraceptive, supported by a $5 million grant from the Gates Foundation.

The Lynx platform evolved through years of R&D and validation, including proof-of-concept and a successful Phase III study, Nortiva said. Its modular design can accommodate a range of small-molecule APIs with different potency, solubility, and molecular weight profiles.

Advantages of Long-Acting Medicines

Company executives believe the platform can optimize safety and efficacy, improve adherence, and positively affect patient quality of life.

“Long-acting oral medicines have the potential to meaningfully reshape how patients manage their health,” Nortiva President Austin Hackett, MD, said.

This reshaping, Hackett continued, can ultimately lead to better outcomes.

“The Lynx platform is built on innovative science and supported by robust clinical evidence,” Hackett said. “Our work now is to build on that foundation to revolutionize drug delivery by advancing our development programs.”

Nortiva hopes to now forge industry partnerships that will eventually deliver multiple long-acting therapies.

“The Lynx platform attracted us with its potential to address significant unmet medical needs,” Innoviva CEO Pavel Raifeld said. “We’re excited about Nortiva’s ability to develop truly differentiated long-acting therapies that improve patients’ lives and create value for partners.”

Nortiva’s advisory board includes Robert Langer, ScD, and Giovanni Traverso, MD, PhD, from whose MIT labs Lynx was first developed.