Orionis Biosciences, Novartis Partner to Advance Molecular Glue Drugs

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Orionis Biosciences, a privately held, clinical-stage life sciences company pioneering proximity-induced therapeutic modalities, has announced a multi-year collaboration with Novartis to discover and design molecular glue drugs for challenging therapeutic targets across multiple disease areas.

The collaboration expands the existing relationship between the companies and reflects a shared commitment to unlock the full value of induced proximity approaches in drug development.

Terms of the Agreement

Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis and Orionis will use Orionis’s Allo-Glue platform, together with its AI-driven discovery engine, to accelerate target and ligase profiling and molecular glue optimization. These integrated capabilities enable the systematic discovery of small molecule glues that modulate therapeutic targets through induced proximity mechanisms.

Orionis will receive an upfront payment of $40 million and is eligible to receive research, development, and commercial milestone payments of up to $1.4 billion, in addition to tiered royalties on net sales of collaboration products.

“We are proud to renew and expand our collaboration with Novartis,” said Niko Kley, CEO of Orionis Biosciences. “Having such a partner continue to engage deeply with us is a strong validation of the value of our molecular glue platform and the progress we have achieved toward rational and scalable discovery of this emerging drug class.”

“We are excited to deepen our collaboration with Orionis and to explore the full potential of molecular glue modalities across multiple therapeutic areas,” said John Tallarico, Head of Discovery Sciences at Novartis. “The Orionis platform offers an opportunity to rapidly uncover and design molecular glue mechanisms, enabling us to expand the horizon of targetable biology for future therapies.”