{"id":81389,"date":"2026-06-11T09:56:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/81389\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:56:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:56:25","slug":"novartis-finds-natural-partnership-in-macrocycle-biotech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/81389\/","title":{"rendered":"Novartis finds natural partnership in macrocycle biotech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unnatural Products is proving to be a natural at securing partnerships, this time linking up with Novartis<\/a> in a deal that could garner up to $1.7 billion in biobucks.<\/p>\n

Novartis is shelling out $100 million in upfront and preclinical milestone payments to work with the California biotech in efforts to develop next-gen cardiovascular disease therapeutics.<\/p>\n

In return, the Swiss pharma will have access to UNP\u2019s artificial-intelligence-guided platform, a discovery engine designed to quickly create potent and selective macrocycles that can be delivered both orally and via injection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Big Pharma will be in charge of all investigational-new-drug-enabling studies and any subsequent clinical development, manufacturing and commercialization of potential drugs stemming from the collaboration.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, UNP could bank up to $1.7 billion in development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments, plus tiered royalties on potential annual sales.<\/p>\n

The two companies did not share specific indication targets in the research and licensing deal announcement, though UNP\u2019s efforts are designed to address historically undruggable targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis collaboration validates the strength of our program and highlights the ability of UNP\u2019s platform to deliver differentiated macrocyclic therapeutics for high-value biological targets for chronic diseases with high unmet need,\u201d UNP co-founder and CEO Cameron Pye, Ph.D., said in a Feb. 18 release.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Novartis believes macrocyclic chemistry advances are \u201copening entirely new avenues in drug discovery, allowing us to engage targets at a dose and with a pharmacological versatility not possible with many other approaches,\u201d according to the company’s global head of discovery chemistry and biomedical research Muneto Mogi, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

Novartis isn\u2019t the first company to bet on UNP\u2019s platform\u2014the biotech has already joined hands with Merck & Co., signing onto a deal worth up to $220 million<\/a> in biobucks back in 2024. More recently, the biotech garnered support from argenx via a deal worth $1.5 billion<\/a> in biobucks that aims to generate orally available macrocyclic peptide drugs against a range of undisclosed \u201cundruggable\u201d targets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unnatural Products is proving to be a natural at securing partnerships, this time linking up with Novartis in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[127],"tags":[41951,1115,42105,9554,3772,9275,41515,42106,206,2534,338,42107],"class_list":["post-81389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novartis","tag-ai-and-machine-learning","tag-biotech","tag-biotech-deals","tag-cardiovascular-disease","tag-deals","tag-fierce-biotech-homepage","tag-licensing-deals","tag-macrocycles","tag-novartis","tag-partnerships","tag-research","tag-undruggable-targets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116730880727935993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81389","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=81389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}