Novartis agreed to acquire Myricx Bio, a privately held U.K. biotechnology company, for up to $1.5 billion, adding a new class of antibody-drug conjugate payloads designed to treat cancers that have developed resistance to existing therapies.
The Swiss drugmaker will pay $1.1 billion upfront and up to $400 million in milestones to gain a novel antibody-drug conjugate payload platform
Sedat Suna / Getty Images
Novartis agreed to acquire Myricx Bio, a privately held U.K. biotechnology company, for up to $1.5 billion, adding a new class of antibody-drug conjugate payloads designed to treat cancers that have developed resistance to existing therapies.
Novartis has agreed to hand over $1.1 billion at signing, with an additional $400 million tied to future milestones, the company announced Monday. Closing is anticipated sometime after June, pending regulatory sign-off and standard conditions.
Founded in 2019 as a spinout from Imperial College London and the Francis Crick Institute, Myricx Bio has developed two lead drug candidates targeting the proteins B7-H3 and HER2, both of which are found at elevated levels in multiple cancer types. The company's central asset is a payload platform based on inhibiting N-myristoyltransferase, or NMT, an enzyme that cancer cells rely on to grow and survive.
"ADCs have become an important part of cancer treatment, but there remains a clear need for new payload mechanisms to overcome resistance and expand their impact for patients," Fiona Marshall, president of biomedical research at Novartis, said in a statement. "This proposed acquisition reflects our strategy to scale innovative platforms, as we have with radioligand therapies, to deliver more durable, transformative treatments for patients."
The NMTi payload approach is intended to address limitations of widely used payload classes such as TOPO-1 inhibitors, against which some cancers have developed resistance, the company said. Preclinical data suggest the platform may retain activity in TOPO-1 resistant tumor models, according to Novartis.
Myricx Bio CEO Mohit Rawat said the deal represents an endorsement of the company's NMTi platform and its potential to improve outcomes for cancer patients. The company raised £90 million in a Series A round in mid-2024, according to GlobeNewswire, led by Novo Holdings and Abingworth, with participation from British Business Bank, Cancer Research Horizons, and Eli Lilly $LLY.
The acquisition is part of a broader push by Novartis into oncology. Recent cancer-focused moves cited by Biospace include a licensing arrangement with Antares Therapeutics and a $2 billion takeover of Pikavation Therapeutics earlier this year. ADCs have drawn significant acquisition interest across the pharmaceutical industry, with Johnson & Johnson $JNJ agreeing to buy Firefly Bio for $1 billion and Roche striking a deal worth up to $2.3 billion with Nurix Therapeutics in recent weeks.
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