Novo is walking away from a collaboration that was centred on developing a once-monthly GLP-1 treatment, returning rights to the programme to Ascendis Pharma just days before Novo is due to provide more detail on its corporate strategy.Ascendis said this week that the 2024 collaboration covering TransCon technology-based products in metabolic and cardiovascular diseases was terminated, with rights to the programmes, including once-monthly TransCon Semaglutide, reverting to Ascendis.Under the 2024 deal Novo had agreed to pay Ascendis up to $285 million in upfront, development and regulatory milestones for the GLP-1 programme specifically, in addition to potential sales milestones and tiered royalties. Novo was responsible for development, manufacturing and commercialisation, while Ascendis supplied its TransCon Carrier and Linker technologies for the early development of candidates with sustained-release and prodrug properties.TransCon Semaglutide is an investigational long-acting prodrug of semaglutide – the key ingredient in Novo's Ozempic and Wegovy products – that Ascendis now plans to advance in obesity and type 2 diabetes.Ascendis' announcement didn't specify why Novo was terminating the tie-up. FirstWord has reached out to the Danish pharma for comment.The pursuit of less frequent GLP-1 dosing by companies, including Novo, has emerged as a key battleground in the race to gain an edge in the market for weight-loss medicines. However, this isn't the first long-acting programme Novo has walked away from. A few months before the Ascendis deal, Novo had scrapped development of a Phase I once-monthly GLP-1/GIP agonist, citing "portfolio considerations."It subsequently pursued Metsera in an intense bidding war to get its hands on the biotech's ultra-long-acting GLP-1 programme MET-097i, but ultimately lost out to Pfizer. The latter is going all-in with nearly a dozen Phase III study starts of the drug, now known as berobenatide, planned for this year.The timing puts Novo's exit against the backdrop of a broader reset at the Danish pharma. On Monday, the company said it would use the shorter "Novo" name for day-to-day business, as opposed to Novo Nordisk, as part of a rebrand and update to its corporate culture, with CEO Mike Doustdar saying the move would help "enhance how we operate and compete."The company is due to provide more detail on its strategy at a capital markets day on Sept. 21.