Novartis snaps up UK ADC developer Myricx Bio

Novartis has reached a deal to buy Myricx Bio for up to $1.5 billion, giving it control of the London, UK, start-up's antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) platform.

The spin-out from Imperial College London and the Francis Crick Institute has built its platform around a novel payload class – the cancer cell-killing component of an ADC that is delivered by the targeting antibody – which it says is highly differentiated from others being used today.

The n-myristoyltransferase inhibitor (NMTi) payload targets an enzyme that adds a specific lipid modification to a number of protein targets key to cancer cell survival, according to Myricx, which says its candidates have been shown to regress tumours in cancers that develop resistance or are unresponsive to current payloads like tubulin binders, topoisomerase inhibitors, and DNA binders, with a differentiated toxicity profile.

The UK biotech has said that retreatment of cancers with the same payload class leads to poor outcomes, with a 50% or greater reduction in the objective response rate (ORR), and its NMTi class could meet "a critical unmet need due to payload resistance and toxicity."

Novartis is paying $1.1 billion upfront to buy Myricx in the transaction, which is expected to close before the end of the year, and has also pledged another $400 million in potential milestone payments.

Myricx's pipeline is led by candidates targeting B7-H3 and HER2, which are both well-validated cancer-associated antigens. Last September, shortly after completing a £90 million ($114 million) Series A, the company said it was expecting to advance its lead candidate into human trials this year.

"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," said Fiona Marshall, president of biomedical research at Novartis.

"Myricx Bio has developed a promising NMTi payload platform with a differentiated mechanism that could broaden the use of ADCs across multiple tumour settings."

With its R&D resources, Novartis' involvement in the technology could also help to establish it as a new class of ADC and bring it to patients more quickly.

Myricx is the third acquisition for Novartis this year, coming after it agreed to buy Palo Alto, US-based Excellergy and its portfolio of drug candidates for food allergies and other IgE-driven diseases for up to $2 billion in March.

In the same month, it also acquired Pikavation Therapeutics from Synnovation Therapeutics for up to $3 billion, to claim rights to a mutant PI3K-targeting drug SNV4818 for breast cancer.