Omalizumab

GSK has walked away from a $2.2 billion biobucks neurodegenerative disease pact with Alector that has seen both drugs involved flunk clinical trials. The British Big Pharma signed off on a $700 million upfront payment to the Bay Area biotech back in 2021 to work together on a pair of therapies. Both drugs were designed to block sortilin in order to boost a protein called progranulin, which helps regulate the brain’s immune activity as well as support neurons. The collaboration was already looking shaky last year when one of these assets, latozinemab, failed to slow disease progression in a phase 3 study of patients with a variety of frontotemporal dementia. In response, Alector said it was dropping latozinemab and halving its headcount. More bad news followed in April of this year, when a phase 2 study of the other drug from the pact, called nivisnebart, in Alzheimer’s disease was halted after being deemed unlikely to hit its endpoint of slowing disease progression. Analysts, who had already viewed latozinemab’s fail as casting doubt on the viability of targeting progranulin, saw the end of the nivisnebart trial as effectively ending the collaboration. But GSK only formally terminated the agreement on Monday, Alector disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week . For the Big Pharma, it means writing off that $700 million upfront payment, while for Alector it’s an acceptance that the $1.5 billion in biobucks tied to the deal will forever remain out of reach. Alector’s next wave of assets uses technology for crossing the blood-brain barrier. The biotech plans to file to test an anti-amyloid beta antibody that uses the technology in humans in the first quarter of next year. TD Cowen analysts have previously said that preclinical data on the technology are “initially promising,” but cautioned that clinical data “remain distant.” GSK’s dealmaking strategy has shifted in recent months under recently appointed CEO Luke Miels, who has been explicit that he’s looking for candidates that improve on existing treatments. In practice, this has meant the $2.2 billion buyout of Rapt Therapeutics for a food allergy reaction drug that targets the same epitope as Novartis and Roche’s Xolair, as well as paying $950 million cash for Canadian biotech 35Pharma and its potential rival to Merck & Co.’s pulmonary hypertension mainstay Winrevair. Last month, the pharma paid $10.6 billion for Nuvalent , securing two near-approval cancer therapies that could challenge products from Roche, Pfizer and other drugmakers. Still, GSK hasn’t abandoned Alzheimer’s completely under Miels’ tenure. The company launched a five-year collaboration with The Jackson Laboratory–New York Stem Cell Foundation Collaborative in February to advance human cellular models of neurodegenerative diseases.

iStock, beast01 The centerpiece of the acquisition is Myricx Bio’s novel N-myristoyltransferase inhibitor payload platform, which could help Novartis develop antibody-drug conjugates that can overcome the limitations of existing therapies. Novartis is betting up to $1.5 billion to absorb Myricx Bio and its pipeline of novel antibody-drug conjugates, adding to the pharma’s recent pick-ups in the cancer arena. Under the terms of the deal, Novartis is fronting $1.1 billion and putting up to $400 million on the line in undisclosed potential milestones, according to a Monday morning release . The companies expect the transaction to close in the second half of this year. For its investment, Novartis will get Myricx’s two lead antibody-drug conjugate programs. Not much has been disclosed about these candidates yet, with the biotech on its website revealing only that one targets the B7-H3 checkpoint protein while the other binds to the HER2 growth factor. Both are known to be highly expressed in cancers. In addition to the two ADCs, Novartis will acquire Myricx’s payload platform, which generates “a new class” of ADCs that carry N-myristoyltransferase (NMT) inhibitors, as per the announcement. These payloads work by targeting the NMT enzyme, which helps maintain the function of certain proteins inside cells. In cancer, NMT plays a role in how malignant cells grow and survive. Myricx’s NMT inhibitor payloads “disrupt critical processes that cancer cells rely on,” Novartis explained on Monday, adding that they have the “potential to address limitations of commonly used” classes of payloads, such as TOPO-1 inhibitors, against which some cancers have developed resistance. The NMT inhibitor platform “could broaden the use of ADCs across multiple tumor settings,” Fiona Marshall, president of Biomedical Research at Novartis, said in a statement. If clinically validated, the pharma sees NMT inhibitors marking a new class of ADC payloads. Mergers & acquisitions Novartis Keeps Deals Coming With $2B Excellergy Takeover The Excellergy acquisition will complement Novartis’ existing allergy profile, anchored by the IgE blocker Xolair that in February 2024 was approved to treat food allergies in children and adults. March 27, 2026 · 2 min read · Tristan Manalac Read more Novartis has made a few big-ticket cancer deals recently. Last month, for example, the pharma put down $105 million upfront to partner with Antares Therapeutics to advance novel therapies for difficult-to-treat cancers. This agreement, which includes up to $1.8 billion in milestones, will leverage Antares’ small-molecule engine, which makes use of covalent drug design, proteomics, structure-driven calculations and machine learning. In March, Novartis shelled out $2 billion to buy Synnovation Therapeutics’ subsidiary Pikavation Therapeutics, which owns the PI3Kα inhibitor SNV4818. The drug is an orally available breast cancer therapy in Phase 1/2 development that specifically targets the mutated from of PI3Kα while avoiding healthy versions of the protein. Novartis has also been an active dealmaker outside of cancer. Last month, the company deepened its existing engagement with Orionis Biosciences, betting up to $1.4 billion in a molecular glue–centered deal targeting several therapeutic areas. And in March, the pharma swallowed Excellergy for up to $2 billion , gaining an anti-IgE therapy for allergic conditions.