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Novartis partners with Monte Rosa Therapeutics in a $5.7 billion deal to develop innovative treatments for immune-mediated diseases using AI technology.
Monte Rosa saw its shares jump 65% following the agreements announcement reflecting investors belief in the partnership.
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Novartis announced a licensing agreement with Monte Rosa Therapeutics valued upwards of $5.7 billion that aims at developing drugs for immune-mediated diseases.
“We are pleased to expand our collaboration with Monte Rosa Therapeutics, building on the strong foundation and progress established through the VAV1 program,” said Fiona Marshall, Ph.D., president of biomedical research at Novartis. “This new agreement underscores our commitment to advancing targeted protein degradation as a promising approach to address immune-mediated diseases with high unmet need. We believe Monte Rosa’s QuEEN platform has the potential to uncover new insights in this field. We look forward to working together to translate these insights into transformative therapies for patients.”2
Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis will pay Monte Rosa an upfront payment of $120 million (along with holding the potential to earn milestone payments and royalties), which brings the total to $5.7 billion. The deal grants Novartis exclusive rights to an undisclosed drug-discovery target, along with the ability to license two other programs from Monte Rosa’s early-stage immunology pipeline. Monte Rosa aims to employ its AI-enabled platform QuEEN to develop and discover new degraders (small molecules engineered to break down disease-causing proteins) selected to move forward in the development process, where Novartis will handle responsibilities for clinical development as well as commercialization. Monte Rosa also confirmed that its publicly disclosed pipeline programs won’t be included within the deal, along with planning to provide additional information on the company’s updated cash position and its Q3 earnings.
The agreement marks the second collaboration between Novartis and Monte Rosa, as last year the two companies formed a deal for MRT-6160, a drug treatment currently in early-stage trials for autoimmune and inflammatory indications.Additionally, this is the second deal Novartis has agreed to this month, as Novartis recently agreed to a $5.2 billion deal with Argo Biopharmaceutical for experimental heart drugs.
Markus Warmuth, M.D., chief executive officer of Monte Rosa Therapeutics, touched on the new agreement with Novartis, saying, “We are extremely excited to extend our relationship with Novartis beyond our previously announced VAV1 agreement given the strong progress made to advance MRT-6160 toward initiation of multiple Phase II studies in immune-mediated diseases. We believe this new agreement further strengthens our relationship with Novartis, a recognized global leader in immune-mediated diseases, and reflects the expansive opportunity in the space for our highly selective and potent MGDs. Our AI/ML-enabled QuEEN product engine continues to generate new insights and opportunities delivering an expanding pipeline of programs directed against a breadth of historically undruggable immunology targets. This new collaboration allows us to expedite the development of certain of those programs with Novartis, leveraging their recognized development and commercialization capabilities. The agreement further strengthens our financial position, which allows us to progress our wholly owned programs, including multiple undisclosed targets in Th1, Th2, and Th17-driven autoimmune conditions, and provides runway beyond multiple anticipated Phase 2 readouts for MRT-8102, MRT-6160, and MRT-2359.”
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