The partnership with Matchpoint Therapeutics gets Novartis global rights on all molecules for several unannounced inflammatory diseases identified through the biotech’s discovery platform.
Novartis plunked down more than $1 billion in biobucks to collaborate with Matchpoint Therapeutics to discover new drugs for inflammatory diseases.
The partnership, announced Thursday, has the companies entering into an optioning and licensing agreement on oral inhibitors of an unspecified transcription factor linked to a variety of inflammatory indications. Specific target diseases were not announced.
Under the terms of the deal, Matchpoint will get $60 million in upfront payments and research funding. Novartis will get all global development and commercialization rights to any molecules that come out of the partnership, with up to $1 billion in future development and commercial milestones, plus tiered sales royalties.
The center of the deal is Matchpoint’s discovery platform, called the Advanced Covalent Exploration (ACE) platform. The company screens the proteome for binding sites on druggable proteins, with the aim of identifying more difficult-to-find cryptic binding sites. Matchpoint heavily touts using covalent chemistry for therapeutic molecules discovered through its platform, which permanently bond to target proteins, as opposed to other drugs like common small molecule inhibitors or antibodies, whose interactions with disease-causing proteins might be more transient.
“The durable target engagement achieved with covalent chemistry imparts improved potency, greater selectivity, and lower systemic exposure than otherwise possible,” Matchpoint said in a statement.
Matchpoint launched in late 2022 with $100 million in startup financing, including a $30 million seed round and a $70 million Series A. Sanofi Ventures led the Series A, with Vertex Ventures HC and Atlas Venture also participating. The company does not have a published pipeline, but upon its launch announced plans to target a “broad range of diseases, including cancer.”
Novartis in recent months has made a series of smaller buys to bolster its pipeline and discovery processes. A month ago it made a similar deal with ProFound Therapeutics, putting down $25 million upfront and $750 million in milestones to explore the proteome for novel cardiovascular therapies. That followed April’s $800 million upfront purchase of Regulus Therapeutics, giving the pharma access to the smaller company’s miRNA pipeline, particularly farabursen, a molecule being developed for polycystic kidney disease.
These purchases align neatly with Novartis’ stated plans. At the company’s end-of-year 2024 report, CEO Vas Narasimhan said that its strategy would be to “look for primarily bolt-on acquisitions that we think will bolster our growth in the 2030 and beyond period.”
