Dive Brief:
- Argo Biopharma said Wednesday it’s entered a new collaboration with Novartis to develop RNA medicines for cardiovascular diseases.
- The deal expands Argo’s work with Novartis, which began last year with two licensing agreements that included initial payments of $185 million. This time, Argo will receive $160 million up front, and Novartis has indicated it plans to participate in the Chinese company’s next financing round. In both cases, Argo said it could receive billions more in future payments.
- As part of the transaction, Novartis will receive an option to license the rights outside China to two discovery-stage molecules for severe hypertriglyceridemia and mixed dyslipidemia and the first right of negotiation to an experimental drug called BW-00112 in Phase 2 research. Novartis also gets a license outside China for a separate molecule expected to enter Phase 1 next year.
Dive Insight:
The agreement is part of a larger trend of major international drugmakers tapping into to the booming biotechnology industry in China. With more regulatory flexibility and lower costs, the country’s biotech startups tend to advance more quickly in medicine development than their rivals in the U.S.
In the case of Argo, Novartis is gaining access to small interfering RNA therapeutics, designed to target the production of disease-causing proteins. It’s a familiar area for the Swiss drugmaker; the company in 2023 bought siRNA specialist DTx Pharma in deal worth as much as $1 billion. It’s also the latest deal between Novartis and a China-based drugmaker, following alliances in recent years with Chengdu Baiyu Pharmaceutical, Legend Biotech and BeOne Medicines.
Argo has had a quick rise. The company had an angel funding round worth about $5 million in May 2021 and followed that up with two more financings of $63 million in November 2021 and $40 million in September 2023. Argo had its first investigational new drug application approved in December 2022, allowing it to kick off a clinical study of BW-00112 in Australia.
The company’s co-founder and CEO, Dongxu Shu, is a veteran of Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, which also specializes in RNA interference drugs.
