Novartis Inks $4.165 Billion Deal with Argo Biopharma for Multiple siRNA Cardiovascular Programs

On January 7, 2024, Argo announced that it had signed two exclusive license and cooperation agreements with Novartis.

According to the first agreement, Argo will grant Novartis a global exclusive license for a Phase 1 cardiovascular pipeline and potential license options for up to two additional targets for compounds aimed at cardiovascular diseases. The discovery, optimization, and PCC stages of these two target compounds will be handled by Argo, while Novartis will have the option to obtain a global exclusive license. According to the second agreement, Argo will grant Novartis an exclusive license outside of Greater China for a Phase 1/2a cardiovascular pipeline to develop and commercialize a clinical-stage project targeting cardiovascular disease treatment.

Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis will receive an upfront payment of $185 million and is eligible to receive up to $4.165 billion in potential option fees, milestone payments, and tiered royalties on commercial sales.

This is the first overseas licensing deal by a Chinese biotech company in the RNAi field, and also the first external transaction for Argo's pipeline.Shaun Coughlin, Head of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases Research at Novartis, stated, "We believe that the cardiovascular programs developed by Argo using its state-of-the-art RNAi platform complement Novartis' RNA-based therapeutic pipeline. We look forward to collaborating with Argo to advance these investigational therapies to help address unmet patient needs in cardiovascular medicine."

Argo Biopharma was founded in April 2021, focusing on the development of siRNA drugs. Its team has many years of professional experience in all aspects of RNAi drug development, including nucleic acid sequence design, chemical modification, GalNAc delivery technology, extrahepatic tissue targeting delivery technology, oligonucleotide synthesis, and CMC. The company has established a complete nucleic acid drug development platform.

Currently, Argo has established more than 20 pipelines around cardiovascular diseases, rare diseases, viral infections, metabolic diseases, and central nervous system diseases. Among them, five are in clinical development stages, and all projects have shown good tolerability and safety.