Dive Brief:
- Novartis will pay biotechnology startup Antares Therapeutics $105 million as part of a multi-target research collaboration to find the Swiss pharmaceutical giant new cancer medicines.
- According to the terms of the deal announced Wednesday, Antares stands to gain as much as $1.8 billion in additional payments if it discovers worthwhile targets and hits certain development and commercialization milestones. It’s also eligible for tiered royalties in “the low double-digit range” on resulting products, the companies said.
- The deal with Antares is the latest in a string of noteworthy research and development collaborations that Novartis has struck to expand its oncology pipeline past its blockbuster radiopharmaceuticals franchise, looking to cancer cell therapy developers, PI3KA-targeting drugmakers and bispecifics startups.
Dive Insight:
Novartis has spent the last three years — and billions of dollars — loading its pipeline with cancer drug prospects. Among those investments were its acquisitions of MorphoSys and Mariana Oncology in 2024. The company is showing signs of slowing down in its shopping spree to acquire promising early-stage assets.
The latest target comes from Antares, a spinout of Scorpion Therapeutics that launched last year. Antares is developing some of the experimental medicines left behind after one of Scorpion’s drugs was scooped up by Eli Lilly in a deal worth as much as $2.5 billion. Antares has stayed mum on what those other drugs are, though it touts its drug discovery engine as the differentiating factor from other biotechs in finding new small molecules for cancer.
“This collaboration lets us scale that engine alongside Novartis’ world-class development capabilities and global reach, so we can translate our science into transformative therapies for patients faster than either of us could alone,” Adam Friedman, Antares’ CEO, said in a statement.
Antares also has research collaborations in place with Pierre Fabre Laboratories, which is testing two non-small cell lung cancer therapies it developed, and AstraZeneca, dating back to its days as Scorpion.
The young biotech is advancing its first program, a “precision oncology” medicine, into the clinic later this year, according to the announcement.
