Novartis tightens bond with Orionis in up to $1.4B molecular glue deal

 

It’s the latest Big Pharma deal for molecular glue technology and Novartis’ second with Orionis Biosciences, after first linking up in March 2020. The backloaded agreement will see Novartis pay $40 million upfront.

Novartis has decided to stick with long-time drug development partner Orionis Biosciences, continuing their work of advancing molecule glue assets across several disease areas and extending the recent trend of Big Pharmas striking deals for the modality.

Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis will pay $40 million upfront and pledge up to $1.4 billion in R&D and commercial milestones, according to a Wednesday release. Orionis will also be entitled to tiered royalties on net sales of products under the partnership that reach the market. The companies first linked up in March 2020 for a four-year engagement, though financial details of that deal weren’t revealed.

As in the case of their original agreement, Wednesday’s collaboration pact will leverage Orionis’ Allo-Glue platform and will combine it with the biotech’s AI-driven discovery engine. The goal, according to the news release, is to expedite the profiling of both targets and ligases, the enzymes that trigger the degradation of disease-causing targets.

All told, Orionis’ tech “offers an opportunity to rapidly uncover and design molecular glue mechanisms, enabling us to expand the horizon of targetable biology for future therapies,” John Tallarico, head of discovery sciences at Novartis, said in a statement. The partners did not specify which diseases they plan to go after.

Aside from Orionis, Novartis is also partnered with Monte Rosa Therapeutics for the development of molecular glues. The companies signed their first agreement in October 2024, with the pharma fronting $150 million and betting up to $2.1 billion in milestones. For its investment, Novartis received a license to work on an early-stage asset for immune-mediated diseases.

Nearly a year later, in September 2025, Novartis inked a second molecular glue agreement with Monte Rosa. For a total investment of up to $5.7 billion, the pharma licensed an unspecified number of glue candidates for undisclosed indications, all of which were discovered with the biotech’s AI engine.

Like Novartis, many other pharma giants have in recent years been putting a lot of money into molecular glues. In April, for instance, Roche partnered with C4 Therapeutics, paying $20 million upfront and promising up to more than $1 billion for degrader-antibody conjugates (DACs) for unspecified cancer targets. DACs are similar to antibody-drug conjudgates (ADCs) but instead of carrying cancer-killing chemicals they carry molecular glues, which are a type of protein degrader.

In May last year, Roche’s Genentech also contracted Orionis, dropping $105 million upfront for small-molecule glues for cancer. Including milestones, the value of that deal could top $2 billion.

https://www.biospace.com/deals/novartis-tightens-bond-with-orionis-in-up-to-1-4b-molecular-glue-deal