(Reuters) -Swiss drugmaker Novartis has signed an up to $5.2 billion licensing and options deal with Argo Biopharmaceutical for its experimental candidates that target cardiovascular diseases, the China-based biotech said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Argo is developing therapeutics that use the RNA interference technology, or RNAi, to silenece genes that contribute to disease or render them ineffective.<\/p>\n
The deal builds on Novartis’ ongoing collaboration with Argo, and includes the right of first negotiation for Argo’s experimental drug, BW-00112.<\/p>\n
The RNAi drug is currently in mid-stage development for severe hypertriglyceridemia, which leads to elevated levels of a type of fat in the blood and increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke.<\/p>\n
Alnylam’s vutrisiran, branded as Amvuttra, is an RNAi drug approved in the U.S. to treat transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, a rare and deadly heart disease.<\/p>\n
Argo’s candidates, which are designed to “deeply and durably target disease-causing proteins, represent an important paradigm shift in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases,” said Shaun Coughlin, Global Head of Cardiovascular and Metabolism at Novartis Biomedical Research.<\/p>\n
Under the agreement for sales outside China, Argo would receive an upfront payment of $160 million and up to $5.2 billion in milestone payments and royalties on future sales.<\/p>\n
According to the terms of the deal, Novartis will also have the option to license two discovery-stage drug candidates, one for severe hypertriglyceridemia, and the other for mixed dyslipidemia, as well as an additional RNA-based molecule expected to enter clinical trials next year.<\/p>\n
Argo said Novartis has also expressed a non-binding intention to participate in its next round of equity financing.<\/p>\n
The overall collaboration with Novartis adds up to more than $9 billion in downstream milestones excluding royalties, Argo said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Sriraj Kalluvila)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Reuters) -Swiss drugmaker Novartis has signed an up to $5.2 billion licensing and options deal with Argo Biopharmaceutical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[127],"tags":[7999,7995,7996,7997,8000,206,7998],"class_list":["post-10350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novartis","tag-argo","tag-cardiovascular-diseases","tag-drug-candidates","tag-experimental-drug","tag-hypertriglyceridemia","tag-novartis","tag-rna-interference"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}