Our CFO with me, helping out for this presentation today. Gubra is a hybrid business. We have our CRO, our contract research part of the business, and we have our discovery and partnership arm of the business. In the CRO part, we conduct pre-clinical research services for pharma and biotech companies within the metabolic disease space. In the discovery, and partnerships, we have our own internal pipeline programs, which we mature to the right level, and then we partner them also with biotech and pharma companies. The third quarter this year has been a really good quarter for Gubra. We've been growing organically in the CRO business, the revenue by 44% compared to the same quarter last year. For the first nine months of the year, it's a growth of 28% compared to the same period last year.
So a really solid growth in the CRO business. We've also recently updated our guidance for the full year, both in terms of the CRO revenue, and also in terms of the adjusted EBIT margin. For the other arm of the business, the discovery and partnership, we've had several good news this quarter. We have been releasing the news that we have now a collaboration with Hemab, Danish biotech company, within bleeding disorders. We've also presented the news to the market that we now have the cardiorenal program that we partnered with Bayer, that's now back in our own pipeline. That partnership has now terminated, and we will continue the development of this project towards healthy weight loss, one of the key focus areas of Gubra. Also, our Amylin obesity project, we are progressing at speed.
We've recently obtained the approval from the British Health Authorities, MHRA, and we are still on track for initiating the first phase I clinical trial with that asset later this year. Last but not least, we have opened an office outside of Denmark, the first office outside of Denmark, and that's based in Boston, on the U.S. East Coast. So Gubra's business is centered around metabolic diseases. Our services, pre-clinical services, are related to obesity, to diabetes, and to other variations of metabolic diseases related to the liver, to the kidneys, and also to the lungs. We have an end-to-end business model, where we provide full pre-clinical studies to our customers, meaning we do all the steps involved, and we deliver a full data package to the customers.
By being end-to-end in-house here, we're able to deliver at speed, and at high quality, and, that's worth a lot, and, we believe that's part of the reason why we see such a healthy growth of the CRO business. Also, we have 15 out of top 20 pharma companies in the world among our clients. So, Christian, some financial stuff here.
Yes. Thank you, Henrik, and as Henrik said, we had a very good run this year, and then we've seen growth across many disease categories. If we should name a few, it's been the same as we talked about on the last quarter calls, being the fatty liver, the NASH/MASH area, the obesity, and the kidney space. So within the fatty liver space, you know, the strong trend already started in Q4 last year, and we've seen that throughout this year as well. And as you may recall, also, there was, you know, important industry data coming out late last year that has rejuvenated and rebounds the interest within this field. And Gubra has been within the NASH for many years, and we have highly ranked pre-clinical models, so we're able to benefit from the strong trend within this industry space.
Obesity, I think no one has not noticed the interest in this field. Again, obesity is also an area where Gubra been for many years, and we see, you know, the interest to develop, you know, new medicines also paving its way to Gubra's order books also. Also the kidney space, and this is particularly interesting 'cause we've been developing this space during the last couple of years, and are able to offer more services within the kidney space, and it's very encouraging to see, you know, that is also making its way again to our order books. The same also goes with the lung field, the IPF, where we also build out new services. So all in all, very strong growth across many disease categories, and especially, you know, encouraging that the new areas we're developing is also growing very strongly.
From a geographic point of view, we can see that the growth is especially high in the U.S., and we get many new small biotech companies also as our customers. And as Henrik also mentioned, we're opening an office in Boston, and so we're able to benefit from, you know, the relatively strong growth trend in the U.S., and we can, you know, further capitalize on the U.S. market with this office now. In terms of earnings, again, a solid performance here as well. EBIT grows, you know, along with the revenue, and even though we are growing the company in terms of employees, we're able to, you know, still, you know, generate a very solid earnings, despite Gubra expanding at quite high speed.
... With that, I'll leave the word over to Niels, please.
Thank you very much, Christian. So, to the other arm of our business, our discovery and partnerships business, it's important to emphasize that we are working with the drug modality called peptides. So we are strictly focused on that, and that has enabled us to really build a very strong engine to develop new drug candidates for our pipeline and also through our partnerships. So the streamlined platform has really enabled us to increase the number of projects in our pipeline. We have also accelerated the development of what we call a clinical candidate, from early hit to a clinical candidate, through this platform.
And we are now down to about one year in this early discovery phase, down from about two to three years in the classical way we did it previously. The streamlined platform also generates a lot of data, and that data is really powerful for making strong patents, and therefore protecting our inventions down the road. So really, the portfolio approach that we are using in Gubra that enables us to both have some early discovery projects, and also have so we try to balance out and make early partnerships, and also slightly later partnerships. So in summary, as Henrik mentioned before, we have we are really excited about this new partnerships that we have made with Hemab, the Danish biotech company that's working with bleeding disorders.
This really is also a testimony to our streamlined platform that we can use this to generate also drugs in other areas than we're traditionally working in. So this is a bleeding-edge area where Gubra is not traditionally known to be very strong. The cardiorenal peptide that we have been developing with Bayer is now back to Gubra, and we are trying to refocus that project towards a healthy weight loss. This is really well in line with our pipeline, which is also biased towards obesity drugs. Financially, we are in line with expectations.
And then finally, and that's very importantly also, as Henrik mentioned, we have had an approval of our CTA just recently, and that means that we can initiate the first patient dosed in this pivotal phase I trial end of this year.
Great. And this slide is just highlighting that the Boston office, which recently opened on Kendall Square, and the fact that being close to our U.S. clients is an important step for Gubra, a strategic step. We see very healthy growth within the U.S. customers and especially within the smaller biotech companies. And having feet on the ground, we believe will enable us to get an even stronger presence within this customer segment. So Gubra Green, that the subsidiary that is investing 10% of the profits, is currently working on the first investment, which will be in a solar power panel site, enabling us to produce even more electricity than what we consume here on site. So a really good example of Gubra Green and the investment focus of this fully owned subsidiary.
Wrapping up, Christian. Yeah, and wrapping up on a very positive note. As you may remember, one or two weeks ago, we raised our expectation for the full year, this year, both in terms of revenue for the CRO business, and as well as earnings for the CRO business. So we expect an organic revenue growth of 25%-28%, and almost the same for the EBIT margin, for the CRO business. So very strong performance throughout, this year, both in terms of revenue growth and in terms of the earnings for this area as well. That concludes our presentation, and now we open up for questions. Operator, please.
Hi, participants. In order to ask a teleconference question, please press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. You can also submit your questions via the Q&A tool on the webcast. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Morten Larsen from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes. Hi, guys. Congrats on a very good quarter and the guidance upgrade. A few questions from me, if I may. Can you talk a little bit about what you see on your cost line items, both in the CRO and the D&P business, and how you see that developing? There are some pushes and pulls into your guidance for Q4. And then I also want to talk about the D&P business. You delivered this new map collaboration, discovery partnership. You guided for one to two for the full year, and you delivered 1, so inside the range there. But can you talk about how you feel about potentially signing another one in the remainder of the year?
Thank you very much, Morten. This is Henrik Blou, and I will start out in reverse order. So starting out, commenting on the collaboration deal, and as you mentioned-
... our guidance for the years one to two new partnerships. We've already the one with the Hemab in place, and we have constantly a number of dialogues ongoing, and we remain very confident with our guidance, one to two new partnerships per year. And in general, we see good interest in our pipeline programs, and we remain confident. I think it's there's pretty good interest out there. So a number of startups ongoing, and when they come to fruition or not, it's difficult to say, but we remain positive on that note. Yes, and also regarding the cost question, could you please repeat, and then I will try to answer it too?
Yeah. I'm sort of trying to figure out sort of the cost assumptions, not on the D&P, which are guiding for, but sort of in terms of your margin for the CRO business, which is 26%-28%. That opens a bit of a leeway into Q4. I think a pretty big range there where you feel comfortable. It seems like you're being somewhat cautious by assuming you're down to 26% for the full year. So is there some one-off items that we need to take into account when you accept the full year? And also, how you feel about sort of maybe the D&P cost development per project here in Q4 going forward?
Okay. Let's take the CRO cost quick number. No, there are no special costs that we expect to appear in Q4. We usually expect somewhere as we had guided somewhere between 26%-28% there, and depending a little bit on, you know, of course, where the revenue and the, the, you know, two-thirds of cost are composed of, of employees. So it's a relatively foreseeable cost structure. In terms of the D&P cost, I mean, what is driving it a little more this year is, of course, the Amylin cost. But on the partnership as such, I mean, we allocate persons that will work on the Hemab project, and that of course, you know, gives a little bit more cost concerning that, but there's no dramatic changes in that business segment here.
I'll step back in line. I do have a few more, but I'll step back. Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a teleconference question, please press the star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. You can also submit questions via the Q&A tool on the webcast.
Okay, seems like there are no more questions. So that will be it for today. Thank you very much for the questions we had, and we're looking forward to present the next quarter once we have the results from it. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.