Novartis announced on July 6 that it will acquire Myricx Bio and its pipeline of antibody-drug conjugates in a deal valued at up to $1.5 billion. The agreement includes an upfront payment of $1.1 billion and up to $400 million in potential milestone payments, according to a company release. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of this year.
Through this acquisition, Novartis will obtain Myricx’s two lead antibody-drug conjugate programs. Details about these candidates remain limited, with information from the biotech indicating that one targets the B7-H3 checkpoint protein and the other binds to the HER2 growth factor, both of which are highly expressed in cancers.
In addition to these programs, Novartis will also gain access to Myricx’s payload platform that generates a new class of ADCs carrying N-myristoyltransferase (NMT) inhibitors. These payloads function by targeting the NMT enzyme involved in maintaining certain proteins inside cells—a process linked with cancer cell growth and survival.
Novartis said Monday that Myricx’s NMT inhibitor payloads "disrupt critical processes that cancer cells rely on," adding they have "potential to address limitations of commonly used" classes such as TOPO-1 inhibitors, against which some cancers have developed resistance. Fiona Marshall, president of Biomedical Research at Novartis, said in a statement, "The NMT inhibitor platform could broaden the use of ADCs across multiple tumor settings." She added that if clinically validated, NMT inhibitors could represent a new class of ADC payloads.
This acquisition continues Novartis’ recent activity in oncology deals. Last month, Novartis agreed to pay $105 million upfront—and up to $1.8 billion total—in partnership with Antares Therapeutics for novel therapies targeting difficult-to-treat cancers using small-molecule drug design technologies. In March, Novartis purchased Synnovation Therapeutics’ subsidiary Pikavation Therapeutics for $2 billion; Pikavation owns SNV4818, an orally available breast cancer therapy currently being studied in Phase 1/2 trials.
